


A Love Song

by skitzofreak



Series: the stars are singing [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Allies to Friends to Accidental Enemies to Pen Pals to Friends to Lovers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Coding, Consensual Sex, Cooking, Davits Draven (minor) - Freeform, F/M, Gangs, Humor, Mon Mothma (minor), Partisans, Prison, Rodma Maddel (minor), Shara Bey (minor), Swearing, background mentions of suicide, growing up in a war, injuries, intense hand holding, poor communication but we get there in the end, some epistolary stuff, young Jyn meets young Cassian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:04:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 65,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens; only something in me understands(Five times Jyn and Cassian meet, growing up in the war)





	1. your eyes have their silence

**Author's Note:**

> somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond  
> any experience, your eyes have their silence:  
> in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,  
> or which i cannot touch because they are too near
> 
> \- e e cummings

_"Damn it, Draven, he always brings the girl in with him. What's he up to, leaving her out here this time?"_

_"We'll find out, sir. It's an opportunity for us, anyway. Sergeant, I want you to make contact. You know what to do."_

_"Yes, sir."_

_"...sending a child to interrogate a child. What are we, Dav?"_

_"Desperate, sir."_

_"Yes. I suppose we are."_

\--

Jyn is twelve years old the first time they meet, and she’s terrified. The fear sits in her chest, jumping in time with the bumps and jolts of the shuttle. She presses her feet hard against the deck and her hands tight against her thighs to prevent either from bouncing up and down and betraying her nervousness. _Visible fear is a visible weakness_ , she chants to herself. _To show fear is to show the enemy a target._

It’s mostly working.

“Chin level with the floor,” Saw coaches her gruffly just before the cargo ramp to their stolen shuttle opens and they walk out into Alliance headquarters. It’s not the first time she’s been allowed to travel with him to this base, but it’s the first time he’s given her a “full rig out” weapon kit, because she’s no longer just his ward, a tag along with a handful of useful tricks. After the Phorsa Gedd raid, she’s finally earned her place as one of his few, dedicated personal cadre. She has a blaster on her belt, a knife up one sleeve and another in her boot. A thermal detonator hidden in her inner vest pocket, just in case. (A newly healing scar on her left hip, and fading bruises on her throat, but that’s not important).

“Shoulders back and down,” Saw continues as he stands before the lowering ramp. “Feet shoulder width apart, jaw relaxed.”

“And always make eye contact,” Jyn completes the list dutifully. She wrinkles her nose a little at her own voice, because she knows she still sounds too high and piping and _young_ to be scary, and that pisses her off a little. She resolves to speak as little as possible, to minimize the weakness.

“Correct,” Saw says shortly.

“You think they’ll be intimidated by a chit like her?” Magva smirks, clipping her secondary blaster to the harness hidden under her shirt.

“Maybe if he strapped a gatling harness to her,” Codo jokes, pointing at Jyn’s chest (he knows better than to poke her, though, not after the last time).

“It is no matter if they do not fear your appearance,” Saw interrupts Jyn’s sharp retort before she can begin. “The hidden weapon is more deadly than the one your enemy sees.”

“Thought we were all buddies here,” Magva says peevishly, peering out the narrow portal at the trees racing by.

 _Not friends_ , Eido growls in Tognathi. _Can’t trust them._

“Even if the Alliance were our friends,” Codo shrugs, “you never know when one might be a spy.”

“Spies don’t live long enough to bother me,” Magva grins and holds up her tertiary blaster. “I make sure of it.”

“Eyes open, mind sharp, my child,” Saw stands as the ramp clanks against the stone floor of the hangar and the moist breeze from the nearby jungle rushes into the shuttle. “We are among allies, but not friends.”

Jyn nods, and then follows her commander out into the bright daylight of Yavin IV. Behind them both, the other three Partisans assigned to Saw’s guard detail rise and follow almost silently, with only the faint clicking of three blaster safeties coming off. Jyn’s stomach is tight, her jaw clenched hard against the faint tremors, her hands balled into fists to keep from shaking.

There is a human at the base of the ramp, a stocky, weathered male with grey hair and sharp green eyes. “General Cracken,” Saw strides up to the Alliance officer, stopping just a hair too close to be comfortable. It’s an old trick, getting into someone’s personal space like that, meant to force them backwards and into a defensive position and a defensive mindset. It works better for Saw than Jyn because he’s huge and covered in armor and Jyn is - well. But she’s working on it. For now, she stays close to Saw’s heels and focuses her attention on Cracken’s entourage while Saw leans just slightly over the Alliance’s spy chief.

Cracken’s jaw tightens slightly, but he does not budge. On the general’s left, a tall redheaded, blue eyed male Human with a deep scowl carved into his face stands with his arms crossed (blaster on his left hip, knife in his front right vest pocket, two datapads clipped to his belt). On the general’s right, a much younger male Human with light brown skin and dark hair, almost painfully thin, his brown eyes darting across the Partisans in an obvious evaluation. He pauses when he sees Jyn, and she works hard to keep her expression stony ( _jaw relaxed, chin level, and count to five between each blink, child, because it’s a little too long to be natural and thus frightens the weak_ ). The young male – the boy – matches her stare for a moment and then slowly looks away. He fixes his gaze on Saw, his eyelids dropping half closed and his hands hanging slackly at his side (no blaster, no blade that she can pick out, did he really come out here completely unarmed?).

“Gerrera,” the general grunts. “The Council will be meeting in an hour. I’ll escort you from here. You will not be needing _all_ of your party,” he sweeps a judgmental gaze across the Partisans that makes Jyn bristle despite herself, her hand hovering over the blaster at her waist, “and certainly not that many weapons.”

Saw’s eyebrows lower in warning, storm clouds on the horizon, but to Jyn’s surprise he does not thunder just yet. “I will leave two,” he replies. “The other two will accompany me, and they will remain armed. I am not in the mood for compromise on this, Cracken, so if you object, I shall depart now,” now Saw’s voice cracks like lightening, “and I shall not return.”

Jyn watches the three Alliance men consider this, sees the dark shadow on the redhead’s face, sees the general’s lips thin with poorly disguised hostility. Only the young one doesn’t twitch or scowl; _he’s probably too young to understand_ , Jyn decides, even though he’s clearly at least a few years older than her. She eyes the blank, uncomprehending look in his eyes as he stares at Saw. _Or maybe he’s just stupid_ , she adds unkindly.

“Be quick about it, Saw,” Cracken says at last. “We have things to discuss before the meet officially starts.”

“Indeed,” Saw replies dismissively, which seems to anger the general more than everything else. With a tight nod, he steps back, and signals to his entourage. Saw turns his back on them, a clear sign that he does not consider them worthy of his concern, and points at Codo. “Stay,” he orders. Then he shifts his finger to Magva and Eido. “With me.” And his last glance is for Jyn. “Scout,” he says quietly, and then (because she is still small and the war has not yet snuffed the last of his warmth) he adds, “Carefully.”

His people nod, and Jyn has to work to hide the little triumphant smile that wants to tug at her face. Saw has just given her an enormous task, a sign of trust. He wants her to scout a large, well-armed, heavily manned base, alone. He knows she can do it, and more, can do it without being caught. Her chest swells a little with warmth, and it pushes back the jittery fear from before.

She goes to stand next to Codo, lounging back against the shuttle as if she means to stand around all day with him. Codo ignores her. The height of the ramp gives Jyn an advantage she normally doesn't have, and over Saw's head she sees the three Alliance males huddling together suddenly to confer. The redheaded man says something to the boy, who nods and slinks away immediately.  The other two men wait for Saw to join them, and for a moment Jyn could swear the red-head is staring right at her, face grim and eyes unreadable. But then Saw reaches them, and the group moves off through the busy hangar and out of sight.

After the Alliance people have left, Codo makes a big show of stomping around near the shuttle ramp, complaining loudly about the heat, the humidity, the utter idiocy of having such a big base out on the surface of the planet where anyone could just bomb it from orbit on a whim. He’s loud and annoying and he gets a lot of scowls from the passing Alliance people. Jyn stays in the shadow of the ramp and watches quietly for a few more minutes, until Codo finally manages to pick a fight that devolves into a shouting match almost immediately (he is good at pissing people off, Codo, and it comes in handy more often than not), and then she slips away.

The base is built into an old temple – a series of old temples, actually, but there’s no way Jyn will cover all of them in the next few hours, so she doesn’t try. She’ll stick to this one, which is apparently the main one anyway. The hangar is huge, and she moves through it easily enough without being spotted. Lots of crates, X wings and U wings and A wings (Jyn takes special note of the A wings; Saw has a bunch of the other two, but not those), and of course, dozens of people all swarming through the space. Jyn takes her time, counting how many of the fighters look like they can actually fly, and how many are missing critical parts or have obvious damage. She notes the small fleet of astromechs humming along through the organized chaos, the distinct lack of security droids, the rare flash of a protocol droid bustling by. She recognizes a stack of crates with the Imperial logo on the side – nutrient bars, enough to feed a whole Partisan cell for a month, even if they didn’t take casualties. She poked through a second pile of crates – a pile that someone just _left_ lying out in the open, for sweet fuck’s sake – and finds a treasure trove of circuits, wires, and data cores. Another stack turns out to be full of…synth-leather? Wow, enough to make boots for a whole battalion.

Alright, so the security is sloppy, the leadership is wishy-washy, and the noise is almost unbearable; but Jyn is forced to admit that at least the Alliance is pretty well stocked.

The hair on the back of Jyn’s neck suddenly prickles. Against her throat, she suddenly becomes aware of her mother’s crystal, digging into the sensitive skin under her collar.

Someone’s watching her.

Jyn slips away from the crates and aims for the edges of the hangar. It’s probably the maintenance crews; she’s the only person in the hangar anywhere near her age, so she’s drawing attention. Saw had outlined the base layout for her in the brief for this trip, so she knows there’s a labyrinth of corridors on the level above the hangar. She’ll try her luck up there next.

She escapes through an unmarked door and finds herself in a slightly less crowded passageway. The feeling of being watched eases, but doesn’t vanish entirely. She tells her stomach to get over it, and hunts for a staircase.

She finds one, and runs lightly up the stairs and into what is indeed a mess of prefab wall sections and modern doors screwed uncomfortably into ancient stone halls. Jyn slinks through haphazardly installed server spaces, barracks, and conference rooms, and what might be some kind of maintenance storage room. She considers picking up a few of the smaller bits and pieces of tech she finds lying around (these people are so careless with their datapads it’s almost criminal; Saw would flay every one of them alive), but Saw told her to scout, not collect.

So she scouts, wandering through and absorbing every little bit of information about Alliance operations that she can. Consoles and comm technicians, armories (locked) and an auditorium (empty), she counts and memorizes and marvels privately at just how many people are all crammed into this space. Saw has about three thousand people spread across the Mid-Rim in roughly two-hundred person cadres (some bigger, most smaller), but Jyn thinks there might be three thousand people just in this one building. It’s almost overwhelming.

It’s probably why she doesn’t see him coming until he catches her.

She finds an office with an almost laughably easy lockpad, and it only takes her a few seconds to crack it open. She doesn’t want to dart inside, in case it’s occupied or bugged or something, so she’s leaning casually against the doorframe and peering around the corner like she just happened to find this open office, when suddenly a quiet voice from behind asks, “Find what you’re looking for?”

Jyn whirls before he’s finished speaking, her fists up and her chin down. Her raw nerves jangle with fear and a reflexive anger, and she lashes out with her right fist towards the speaker before she even gets a good look at him.

He’s closer than she anticipated, which accounts for why her aim is off. The blow glances off his arm instead of ramming into his gut, and it gives him time to jump back and out of striking range. It’s the young male from before, the confused one – although now he looks significantly more alert, eyeing her warily and dropping into a defensive stance.

Jyn halts her attack, heart hammering, and eyes him right back.

“You were ordered to stay with the shuttle,” he says after a moment. His voice is accented, something Mid-Rim but not from anywhere Jyn recognizes. She gives him another once-over, more thorough than before now that he’s the only thing to look at. Fifteen or sixteen, she decides, though his clean shaven face, slightly too-long hair, and clothes that hang just a little too large off his lanky frame are clearly meant to make him look younger. Maybe Cracken brought him out as a direct counter to Jyn, an attempt to show Saw that the Alliance also knew how to raise soldiers.

Maybe they just thought she would trust another person who looked her age.

She’s waited too long to respond, and he raises his eyebrows and speaks in a slow, almost syrupy voice reserved for small children or the senile. “Are you lost?”

Jyn’s jaw clenches, and she leans her weight forward on her toes, ready to launch herself at him. “Fuck off, skrog.”

He raises his hands instantly, palms out, eyes wary. “You were ordered to stay with your shuttle,” he says again, but this time it’s less an accusation and more a question.

“No,” Jyn snaps. “I wasn’t.”

“That is a restricted space,” he says after a moment, jerking his head toward the office. His eyes linger on the lockpad, where the ‘automatic open’ sensor is lit up. The door is supposed to only open for anyone carrying the correct code cylinder, but Jyn’s set it to open for any movement at all. Sometimes these cheap, crappy lockpads break and do that all on their own, and she’s counting on that as an excuse, the old ‘it was like that when I got here’ free pass. She has a feeling it won’t work on the boy. So she shrugs, ignores the door entirely, and makes a sharp gesture at her feet.

“ _This_ isn’t,” she retorts. She’s standing in the hallway, after all, not even a toe over the line into the office itself.

His hands stay up and his eyes wary, but his mouth twists a little in humor at her blatant deflection. When he speaks again, his voice is no longer condescending, merely dry. “You going to be a lawyer when you grow up?”

“You still going to be an asshole when _you_ do?”

He stares her down, seemingly unmoved, except his tongue darts out and licks his lips (a tell, she’s startled him, and he’s debating how to respond). Finally, he tilts his head and says in a matter of fact tone, “You know I can’t just let you snoop around, yes?”

Slowly, Jyn settles back on her heels and lets her fists lower. She doesn’t relax (she never relaxes) but she isn’t eyeing his jugular anymore, either. The boy’s hands drop with hers, and after a hesitant moment, he leans against the wall, as if nothing interesting or tense just happened at all.

She gives him her best unimpressed look. “You going to arrest me?”

“I am no warden.”

She folds her arms and glares at him, waiting. Five seconds between blinks, chin level with the floor.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Alright,” he says suddenly, as if answering a question she hasn’t asked. He pushes from the wall and stalks past her. Jyn flinches as he almost brushes against her arm in passing (no, wait, not a flinch, just…dodging. Because he might be up to something), and she turns to watch him as he crosses behind her. He stops a few steps away and glances back over his shoulder. “Well?”

Jyn blinks at him. “Well _what_?”

He doesn’t turn to meet her eye, just shrugs and makes a slightly ‘follow me’ gesture. “Are you coming?” And then he moves again, and Jyn hesitates, but despite her doubts she trots after him. She rationalizes that if he’s really working directly for that general, Cracken, then he might have access cylinders or codes or something to the really interesting places. Maybe she can get a hand in one of his pockets.

He doesn’t say anything when she catches up, but she thinks he might be holding back a smile. “So you’re going to be a tour guide,” Jyn prods, just to see how he will react.

He doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s always been a dream of mine, yes.”

Jyn rolls her eyes at him. “High goals.”

“It’s that or intergalactic dancing celebrity,” he replies blandly, but he waggles his eyebrows at her over his shoulder before ducking through the next doorway. Jyn bites the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t laugh.

He leads her through several of the twisting hallways, and then up another level, where the smells of burnt caf and frying grease mix with the slightly overwhelming scent of dozens of sentient bodies all pressed together in a hot, humid space. “The mess hall,” the boy tells her unnecessarily as he leads her in.

Jyn gives him the side-eye. Seriously? She’s the protégé of _Saw Gerrera_. She’s been training in resistance techniques since she was kriffing eight years old. “We’re not going to bond over a friendly meal,” she says flatly.

It’s his turn to look startled, before he wipes it clean from his face. “An army operates on its stomach,” he says just a touch too smoothly. “Digestive track,” he corrects as a bright blue Quor’sav shuffled between them, wearing the pips of a Lieutenant and the expression of a tired mother.

Jyn stares at him.

He sighs. “Don’t you want to scout our supplies then? See how we’re situated? Seems like an important piece of any report.”

Jyn’s chest tightens slightly at this confirmation; the boy _knows_ what she’s doing here. But…he’s not calling security on her. He isn’t demanding that she go back to the shuttle. He’s…helping her?

There’s got to be trap in this somewhere. Maybe he’s going to lure her somewhere with no witnesses and try to shoot her in the back or something. Except he still doesn’t appear to be armed, and anyway, Saw would rip this place apart.

It really would be useful to know how much food the Alliance has on hand.

“Alright,” she says eventually. (After all, if he pulls anything, she’ll just ram her knee into his junk, like Magva taught her.) This time he does smile, if only briefly. He leads her back behind one of the counters were a few people and an old R1 are manning a food line.

One of the humans, a tall, handsome fem with caf-dark skin and the curliest hair Jyn has ever seen turns and smiles at them. “Cassian!” She calls in a musical voice. “Sneaking in after hours, again, eh? Is it a snack you’re after?” She claps a big hand onto the boy’s ( _Cassian_ , Jyn repeats to herself, his name is Cassian) shoulder and gives him a friendly little shake. “You missing meals again, boyo? Not healthy, not when you’re trying to grow yet.”

“Thanks, Sophie, but I’m - ” he pauses, glances at Jyn. “Actually, yes, please. Got anything off hand?” (And again Jyn thinks, _seriously?_ He’s _still_ going to try the “let’s make friends over this food, which I generously got for you” trick? Now she’s just being insulted.)

The request seems to delight Sophie, who throws back her head and laughs. “Do I have anything off hand?” She repeats slightly incredulously, with an air of mock offense. “And sure am I not the head chef in these wild parts? Do I have anything, _pah,_ the impudence. Gavo!”

A gawky Rodian snaps to attention from behind. _“Yes, Master Chief?”_ he warbles in his native tongue.

“A plate for my lad Cassian here, Gavo, and another for…” she gives Cassian a pointed look, and the boy turns and looks back at Jyn. The tall woman looks at her too, and so does the Rodian, and at least two of the other workers. There’s a definite smirk in the corner of Cassian’s mouth, and Jyn scowls at him, because he’s neatly maneuvered her into this. She almost lies, but at the last second realizes that there’s a decent chance he already knows her name. Saw never, ever calls her ‘Erso,’ but he never bothered to stop calling her ‘Jyn,’ either. If the Alliance did any prep work for this visit at all, they probably know about Saw’s youngest soldier.

This is a test.

“Jyn,” she tells the tall woman, not looking at Cassian. “My name is Jyn.” Beside her, Cassian shifts his weight slightly and watches her from the corner of his eye. She stares back at him, challenging, and doesn’t miss the little quirk of his lips when he swallows back a smile. She figures that means she passed.

“Jyn,” Sophie grins widely at her, then turns and snaps her fingers at the Rodian. “Well, hup hup, lad, let’s not bang about all day! Plates for the sergeant and his friend, let’s go!”

Jyn catches the little wince on Cassian’s face when the cook gives away his rank, and it’s her turn to smirk at him. He shrugs at her irritably, and then accepts a plate loaded down with…oh, _ner ori’dush kar’ta, i_ s that Mandolarian fried rice? And real meat? The cook must really like this boy, because there’s practically a mountain of it piled on that plate.

Her stomach growls a little, hopefully too low for anyone to hear over the clanking of the kitchen staff and the ambient noise of the mess hall. She hasn’t eaten since…yesterday? And that was a nutrient bar. Half a nutrient bar.

The cook shoves the heaping plate at Cassian, and then a second, equally heaping plate at Jyn. She can feel the boy watching her again, but the smell drifting up from the plate is so good it’s making her eyes water.

She takes the plate.

Alright, but she’s still not going to bond with him or anything.

“Enjoy, lass,” the cook says cheerfully, and then bustles back to her station in the kitchen.

They find an empty spot in the mostly deserted tables (it’s off hours, apparently), and Jyn makes a point of not looking at him as she digs in.

Kriff, it’s really, really good. And there’s so _much_ of it.

To her relief, he doesn’t try to talk to her for several minutes. Jyn eats quickly, eyes flicking around the mess hall, marking exits and people and storage spaces, but Cassian…

She can’t help it, she giggles a little. He pauses, his plate almost as empty as hers, and looks up. “What?”

Jyn looks from his fork to his face and smirks. “You ever seen a rhythm box?” At his blank look, she holds her fork up and swings is back and forth. “It this thing musicians use to set a beat, tick, tick, tick,” she demonstrates, and the confusion suddenly clears on his face.

“Metronome,” he corrects.

“Rhythm box,” she snaps back.

“So you’re a musician. Going to play the Coruscant Opera circuit someday?” He smirks at her and shoves the forkful into his mouth, raising an eyebrow at her.

She ignores his comment, pointing her fork at his mouth. “You eat like that,” she says, and then laughs again when he halts, one cheek bulging slightly from the food and staring at her. “Tick, tick, tick,” she chants, wiggling her fork at him in rhythm. “If that dancing celebrity thing doesn’t work out for you, you can just eat on the sidelines and keep the beat for everyone.”

“I was wrong, you’re not going to be a musician. You’re going to be comedian.” He rolls his eyes and resumes chewing, although he looks slightly self-conscious about it now. Jyn lets it go, scraping up the last of the food from her plate with relish. She chooses to think of this as a victory; she got a glimpse of the Alliance’s food storage in the kitchens, _and_ she scammed a free meal. This was shaping up to be a really good recon mission.

As if he can read her mind, the boy glances up and asks again, “So did you find what you’re looking for?”

She bristles a little, but she’s so full of good food that it’s hard to be really irritable towards him. “In here, sure,” she says with a dismissive shrug. “Supply situation’s not half as bad off as I expected.”

This seems to startle him. “You honestly thought we were starving?”

“Only when I saw you coming up,” Jyn flashes a sly grin at him. “You look like one of those sad ‘starving orphans on rebel worlds’ propaganda flyers the Imps plaster everywhere.”

He scowls at her, but there’s no heat in it. “Says the poster child for the ‘feral children’ charity.”

All the humor burns out of her in a flash. “Not a child,” Jyn spits at him, because she isn’t, not really. Children don’t know how to angle their knives between four different species’ ribcages. Children don’t know how to slice an Imperial air recycling system to replace the oxygen with carbon monoxide. Children don’t sleep in a ball in the corner with a knife in one hand, knowing that they might wake up to bombs and fire at any moment. “Not for a long time,” Jyn finishes, scowling at the empty plate.

“Yes,” he replies quietly, and she risks a glance through her eyelashes at him. He’s looking at her neck, where the faded bruises from the deathtrooper’s grip are still visible. When he catches her looking, he drops his gaze to his hands, clenching his fingers slowly on the table top. “I know,” he says it more to himself than to her. “I know.”

Abruptly, Jyn jumps to her feet. She grabs both of their empty plates and stomps off towards the bins where other empty dishes are stacked, dumps both, and then without glancing back for him, heads for the door opposite of the one they came in.

He catches up before she’s halfway across the mess hall, falling in beside her. “Where are you going?”

She shrugs. She has no idea. He seems to pick up on that quickly enough, as she veers wildly through the hallways, marking supply closets and open barracks doors and sealed office doors as she goes. It’s all so haphazard, this base, this “official” part of the rebellion. New things slapped on top of old things, cheap materials piled with nicer (obviously stolen) goods. And they have just as many non-humans as the Partisans, except…not in command ranks, Jyn starts to notice with some interest.

Guess even the noble Alliance has its prejudices, she thinks with a snort.

“Hey,” Cassian taps lightly on her shoulder, withdrawing before she can smack him away. “This way.” He darts suddenly into a side door, and Jyn follows him through half a second before she realizes that she could have taken the chance to shake him.

Then she gets a good look at the room, and her jaw drops a little.

It’s a droid bay, but so clustered and crazily organized that it looks more like a junkyard – or like a droid factory exploded and then someone shoved all the bits into a small workshop. Bits of droids hang from the ceiling in neat rows, hung up like laundry on the washline. Stacks of droid bits are arranged on the floor so that there are only three narrow walkways clear for passage. The bulkheads are covered in shelves of all shapes and sizes (and all materials too, karking hells, is that a piece of a _TIE fighter wing_ bolted to the wall?) and loaded with wires, circuits, and bits of metal. An oil bath is humming gently in one corner, and there are seven recharge stations against the nearest wall, though only one is currently occupied by a little astromech that beeps and whistles to itself softly as they pass.

Cassian leads her to the back of this slightly overwhelming space, to a workbench tucked in the corner that is starkly neat. There are small boxes with labels written in a painfully neat hand lines up along the back, holding screws, wires bits, and a variety of other small droid pieces. There are a few tools hanging from hooks along the side of the work bench, and a stool shoved underneath it to conserve space. It looks out of place in the chaos of the droid bay, too clean. “Just grabbing something,” the boy tells her, rifling through the boxes absently.

Jyn folds her arms and stares around at all the tech. Most of it is damaged, all of it is second hand (at least), and none of it looks like it was obtained legally. The Partisans have a lot of tech too, but not many droids. Saw doesn’t like them, because their loyalty is only a program and can be tampered with. The only droid Jyn’s had much interaction with was a farming droid (a long time ago, and she doesn’t think about it, ever) and the medical droid that Saw routinely orders to be wiped, just in case. The medical droid calls everyone “master” and it makes Jyn uncomfortable, so she doesn’t deal with it much. Unless, well, she has no choice. Like after Phorsa Gedd.

Damn it, now the scar on her hip itches. Shouldn’t have thought about it.

She’s so caught up in her thoughts that she doesn’t immediately notice that the boy is staring at her again. “Are you alright?” he asks.

Jyn jumps, snapping back to the present. “Is this what you do?” She sweeps a hand out at the droid bay. “You’re a droid tech?”

He follows her gesture and looks around at the chaos, then turns back to the workbench. “Yes,” he says glibly. “I am a droid tech.”

“Liar,” Jyn snarls, surprising even herself. She doesn’t know what it is about his voice or expression that tips her off, but the way he jumps and snaps his head around to look at her tells her that she was right. “You _are_ a liar,” she says defensively as his expression twists into something angry and cold.

The silence stretches between them, broken only by the hum of the oil bath and the soft crooning of the astromech.

“What do _you_ do, Jyn?” Cassian asks, his voice low and frigid. “What are you, in the Partisans? Good luck charm? Punching bag?” he pauses, and deliberately drops his eyes to her neck, and then back to her face. His voice takes on an edge of a sneer. “Saw’s personal toy?”

Jyn’s nails bite into her palms, and she grits her teeth against the enraged curses she wants to hurl at him. She wants to fly at him, bash his pretty boy face in and bolt before he can retaliate. She could just turn on her heel and bolt for the door – she’s got a clear path to it, and she’s got enough of the temple layout that she could get back to the hangar easily. She can probably get back to the shuttle long before he caught up with her. His legs are long, but there are no scars on his knuckles, his nose is unbroken, his teeth aren’t chipped. He’s not a brawler, not like her. She could get away.

“Scout,” she says shortly. “Saboteur. Fighter.”

He leans back against his workbench and nods, the sneer fading but the cold calculation still firmly in place. “Slicer,” he adds. “Thief.” She was right – the Alliance clearly has a file on her.

And he’s read it, she realizes with a jolt.

She looks him dead in the eye and points one finger at his chest. “Spy.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t react at all, and that tells her everything she needs to know.

She remembers the vague, confused look on his face out in the hangar that made her think he was an idiot, even though he was clearly in the general’s personal entourage. The way he’d snuck up on her in the hallway. That trick he’s used to see if she would confirm her name out loud. She really should have known.

Part of her wants to run. Part of her wants to punch him. The rest of her is…a little sad.

 _Spies don’t live long enough to bother me,_ Magva laughs in her memory, and maybe he really can read minds because Cassian’s eyes flick to Jyn’s waist, to the blaster hanging there.

The way he’s leaning back against the bench has caused the heavy material of his overlarge jacket to shift. There’s a holster tucked under his right arm, with the handle of a blaster just visible against his rough second-hand shirt.

Jyn drops her accusing finger.

She opens her mouth, but she has no idea what she’s going to say until the words tumble out of her. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”

“Nothing,” he replies immediately, his face blank, his voice as fixed and unchanging as the stars.

Her throat feels like she’s swallowed a desert. Her legs almost tremble with the desire to turn and run. But Jyn can’t remember the last time anyone was honest with her like this. Even Saw doesn’t talk about the future, doesn’t ever acknowledge where this life is leading her.

So she stays. So she asks. “Why not?”

“The average serviceable lifespan of a field intelligence operative is five years,” he tells her calmly. “Statistically speaking.”

Jyn steps closer, dropping her voice. “How long?” she asks softly.

He watches her but makes no attempt to move away. His face and voice are dull and impassive, but there is nothing vague about his eyes at all, not anymore. “Six years.” Then his jaw ticks, briefly, and he adds in a slow voice, like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it, “But I’ve been here for nine.”

“It’s been four, for me,” Jyn answers, and it feels a little like a bargain, like they’re trading something valuable only to themselves, and she’s not even sure why. “You’ve already beaten the average,” she points out, but it’s the wrong thing to say because the sneer creeps back onto his face.

His voice is so low he’s almost whispering now. She can barely hear him over the hum of the oil bath, although his tone is still indifferent, colored with contempt. “I probably won’t for much longer.”

For some reason, this ignites the simmering anger that his earlier comments have sparked in her chest. Jyn reaches out and shoves him, hard. He’s already leaning against the workbench, so he doesn’t fall, but it knocks him a little askew and replaces the sneer with a surprised shout. He reflexively grabs her shoulders to steady himself, and Jyn lets him, digging her short nails into his upper arms in turn. “ _I_ am.”

He blinks at her, and Jyn shakes him a little. “I’m not going to just, just… roll over and kark it because the _statistics_ say so,” she growls, aggressively leaning up and getting into his face. “I’m not a whinging _shutta_ who lets bloody _math_ tell me whether or not I get to live or die.” He opens his mouth to answer, but Jyn plows on, shaking him again. “And you’re not really all that kriffing fragile, you son of a bantha bitch, or you wouldn’t be hiding a blaster in your coat and a knife in your sleeve.” She lets go of his right arm only long enough to slap her hand hard against his left forearm, where she can now feel the outline of a slim spike-dagger strapped just above his wrist. Then she clamps her hand back around his arm and bares her teeth. “I don’t give a shit what they tell you up in your fancy fucking command center with your fancy fucking files, _Cassian_ , but you aren’t going to die just because it’s, it’s - shit, ‘cause it’s _expected_.”

She’s so angry that her face feels like its burning and her jaw hurts from clenching it so tight. Her heartbeat is loud in her ears, and she doesn’t know why she’s so angry at his casual acceptance of his own death, his mocking certainty that he’s not going to ever be anything more than a token piece in the war that centers his life. But she is angry, she’s pissed off and unbalanced and she wants to, karking hells, she wants to _hurt_ him for saying it like that. She’s considering it, actually, deciding whether she’d rather punch his face or his gut, when suddenly he hauls her towards his chest and throws his arms around her.

Jyn freezes.

“Yes, you are,” he says against her hair, and he’s hugging her so hard that her lungs protest. It’s almost vicious, this embrace, a little painful and a little scary. “You’re going to survive. You’re going to grow up and be a lawyer. Musician. Whatever. You’ll be okay.” His voice is still low but no longer cold, no longer resigned. “You’re not going to die, Jyn.”

Jyn’s eyes sting. She slams them closed, tight against the tears, and because she doesn’t know what else to do, she buries her face against his thin chest and wraps her arms tight around his waist.

“You’ll be okay,” he says again, and then again, over and over in that low voice against her hair. After a moment, his grip doesn’t really loosen but he’s no longer crushing her so hard, and Jyn shakes her head slightly to wipe her face on his shirt before she pulls sharply away.

He lets her go, though his hands drag along her shoulders and down her arms before he breaks the contact.

She doesn’t look at him, and she isn’t sure if he’s looking at her or not. She isn’t sure which she would prefer. “I have to go back,” she mutters in a voice that’s almost normal, staring past him at his workbench. The box he was rifling through when she called him a liar is still sitting open just behind his elbow. It looks like it’s full of scopes, cracked or worn or broken into component parts. She wonders what he was looking for when her questions derailed him. She turns her back on it, on him, and walks slowly towards the far door.

Cassian is silent, but she hears the scrape of boxes and the clatter of small parts as he puts his space back to rights. He catches up to her again just before she makes it to the door. They walk out of the droid bay in silence with Jyn intentionally leading the way, just to see if he’ll say anything about it. He doesn’t.

The noise of the hangar is just as overwhelming as before, but Jyn ignores it and marches directly back towards her shuttle, not bothering to sidle and slip her way through. Cassian follows at her side, and if Jyn didn’t know what he was, what he did, she’d probably be suspicious that nobody calls out to him here, or nods in greeting, or even seems to notice he’s there. She gets a few surprised stares, and a pilot with a big mustache stops what he’s doing and exclaims _balls, they’re bringing ‘em in young now_ with an open stare at Jyn, but nobody glances at the boy at her side.

Codo is leaning against the bulkhead at the top of the ramp, his rifle slung easily against his hip, picking his teeth like he hasn’t a care in the world. Jyn knows he sees them, but he doesn’t react, just stares coolly out at the jungle and taps his foot idly. Cassian stops when they’re just out of earshot, and Jyn stops too. Finally, she dares to look up at him, and he gives her a small, half smile. “Good luck, Jyn,” he says, and holds out his hand as if he’s been practicing it.

Jyn takes it, gives it a firm shake. “Right,” she says, a little stupidly. “You too.” He drops both the smile and the handshake, and without another word, turns and walks away.

Fuck it.

“I’ll see you next time,” Jyn calls after him, trying to keep her voice casual, trying not to let it sound like a promise (it does).

He pauses, but doesn’t turn. “Sure,” he replies, in the same voice.

And then he’s striding off around a nearby X wing and out of sight.

Jyn doesn’t linger to watch him go, not with Codo standing right there. She turns and marches back up the ramp and into the shuttle, not even glancing at the other Partisan, and pulls out her datapad. She has a lot to tell her commander, and Saw doesn’t accept written reports but if she writes it down first she can organize it into a more coherent form before she recites it for him.

“Make a friend, didja?” Codo asks from the doorway.

“Eyes out,” Jyn orders without looking up. “You’re on duty.”

“Not for much longer, looks like,” Codo snaps upright, swinging his rifle into his arms. Jyn’s head jerks up from her datapad as Saw comes stamping through the hangar, and Jyn can’t see his face very well from this distance but she can tell from the set of his shoulders and the pace of his steps that he’s in a raw fury. Magva and Eido are half-jogging in his wake as maintenance personnel and droids scatter before him. Over his shoulder, Jyn catches a glimpse of the grim redheaded man who had also accompanied the general earlier. There are two armed guards flanking him, and they are watching Saw storm through their hangar like dogs eager to be let off the leash.

Jyn snaps her datapad away and scrambles to her feet. Something’s happened, something bad, and the tightness in her guts is back with a vengeance. She pulls her own blaster and dives towards the opposite side of the door from Codo. They both step back and into the shuttle, taking partial cover, waiting. Behind her, their pilot is slapping at the controls and cursing as the old shuttle engine spools up.

If it comes to a shoot-out, they’re probably all dead.

_You’re not going to die, Jyn._

“Go!” Saw thunders as soon as he sweeps up the ramp. Magva slaps the door switch as she slides in on his heels, and Eido plants himself in the center of the ramp and actually raises his rifle, pointing outward at the hangar, until the door closes all the way.

“If they decide to shoot us down, this pokey piece of shit won’t be enough to escape,” Magva tells Saw matter of factly.

The tightness in Jyn’s stomach spreads up into her chest.

“The cowards will not strike us down so blatantly in front of their soldiers,” Saw replies harshly, moving to tower over the pilot and scowl out of the front viewscreen. “They prefer to slink in the shadows and pander to selfish Imperial Senators.”

Jyn holsters her blaster and grabs a handhold as the shuttle shudders and rises. “They will not even lift a finger to destroy that parasite on Onderon. But if they will not aide us,” Saw’s voice was a thunder again, rivaling the roar of the shuttle engine as they departed atmosphere and prepped for hyperspace. “Then we shall no longer throw away our resources and time in service to their _politics.”_

“We’re not going back?” Jyn’s voice is still too high, she thinks irritably. It makes her sound like a child, and even people who know better react to her that way.

Saw glances back at her and nods once. “We are free of their moralizing and their hypocrisy,” he says firmly. “From now on, the Partisans will act to destroy the menace of the Empire as we see fit.”

Magva gives an ugly laugh, Eido snarls something in Tognathi that she doesn’t hear, and Codo gives Jyn a wry little grin and shrugs, like it’s all a big silly joke to him anyway and _what can you do? Saw’s made up his mind, guess we're done with that lot._

And that, Jyn thinks as the tightness in her chest hardens into something cold and heavy, is why she should know better than to make promises.

The stars blur and streak into bright lines, and Jyn sits quietly in her seat and pulls her datapad out again, but she doesn’t type on it for a long, long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is fifteen in this story, in case you were curious.
> 
> The [Quor’sav](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quor%27sav) are a species that have both avians and monotremes (platypus are monotremes. Fun fact: [platypus have no stomachs](https://www.thedodo.com/the-improbable-platypus-7-fact-668223014.html). Wild, right? Anyway, this has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was neat.)


	2. your slightest look

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your slightest look easily will unclose me  
> though i have closed myself as fingers,  
> you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens  
> (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
> 
> \- e e cummings

Jyn is fourteen years old the second time they meet, and she’s bleeding. It’s not the worst injury she’s ever had, but it’s definitely one of the messiest. Head wounds always are, she remembers as she scrubs at the sticky red gunk dripping into her left eye, and tries to remember where she heard that. No, wait, not important. What’s important right now is…is...oh, yes, the door. Have to get that door open. That door will get her…somewhere. She’s a little fuzzy on the specifics, but she knows it goes _somewhere_. Somewhere that is not here.

The alarms are really fucking loud, boring into her head like relentless hammer blows ( _Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!)_ , and “not here” may be an indeterminate place but right now it sounds great.

Jyn leans against the wall and jams her electro-pick into the triple-seeded symmetric encryption lock on the door (Chirrit&Chirrit’s Three Suns Standard, original Naboo model, too _, damnit_ , why couldn’t it be something easy like a Damorind Diamond Lock?). The pick sparks and the readout in her other hand starts to scroll through the code; ( _Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_ ) Jyn squints and tries to track the lines, looking for the ‘key’ hidden in the fault, the back door coding that security companies always built into their wares. Chirrit&Chirrit are officially considered one of the least hackable companies, because they “never use backdoors.” Banthashit, they’re just really good at hiding them, and Saw makes Jyn practice cracking every new lock that comes out for days until she finds the fault, the one line (one symbol, sometimes) that if she tweaks it just right, will let her do pretty much anything she wants to the rest of it.

What she wants is usually confusion, chaos, and a total system meltdown. Right now, she’ll settle for “an open door.”

_Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_

The worst of it is (blood in her eye again, and she can’t crack a thrice-cursed door when she can’t _see_ it, for fuck’s sake, come on, Jyn, get it together) she didn’t even trigger the damn alarm. Jyn’s mission was going perfectly well, thanks, ( _Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_ ) no one had even noticed when one of the school children on the field trip to the droid factory had slipped away near the offices. She’d been halfway through uploading a particularly nasty virus onto the factory mainframe via the Director of Application Engineering’s console, no red flags at all, everything going fucking swimmingly (Force _damn_ it the blood just keeps _dripping_ in her _eyes_ and she’s trying to _work_ here) –

 _There!_ A line of code with a clear gap, and Jyn taps a few commands that fizzle through the lock’s primary configuration program and convince it, just for a second, that someone with authorization has just touched the keypad.

_Intruder! Intruder! Yes, everyone knows, shut up! Intruder!_

The door slides open, and Jyn launches herself through, ripping her electro-pick from the pad as she goes and snatching her arm through the narrowing gap just before the door snaps shut again. The move unbalances her a little, and she spins on her heel to rebalance –

_Droid!_

\- and Jyn is lifted from the floor by something metal that digs into her loose schoolgirl sweater and yanks her sharply up. Her head is forced back, her throat closes off as the fabric tightens around it, and she claws desperately at the metal but can’t even get her fingers all the way around it. Her feet dangle, and she kicks out wildly because  _hells_ if she’s going to just let them murder her without a _fight_. She’s not wearing her steel-toed boots though, only soft, ill-fitting shoes that match her stolen uniform but practically fall off her feet.

_Intruder! Intruder! Kay put her down!_

The front of her sweater goes slack, and Jyn drops to the ground in a graceless heap. She’s up in a blink, because someone is reaching for her – too close to punch, so she throws her arms around their (his?) neck and slams them both back against the wall. Arms hard around her shoulders but he doesn’t resist, maybe she surprised him, got to get him between her and the droid, that’s important, he’s bigger, he’s block any blaster fire, she can duck down and shove him back to the KX and maybe it will buy her time -

“-okay! You’re okay! Easy, I’m not going to hurt you, you’re okay!”

The words burn suddenly into her brain – _you’re okay, Jyn, you’ll be okay_ \- because she doesn’t recognize the voice or her brief glimpse of the young Human male’s face but these are not words that people say to her. These are not the words of an Imperial soldier, or a slaver, or an enemy.

Over the stranger’s shoulder, the KX droid is simply standing quietly, watching them with glowing eyes. Shouldn’t it be attacking? Signaling for backup? Wait, this factory makes RA droids, not KX droids, that’s a whole different company.

_Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_

Jyn freezes, arms locked around the stranger’s neck, and she’s pissed off and scared and her head hurts so damn much that she’s fucking shaking, _shit, that’s not going to help, stop that and get a grip, get a clue, get a handle on the situation._

First…what the fuck is the situation?

Human male, tall, thin, and dark haired, age indeterminate but he’s got a beard (scratchy against her cheek), wearing a heavy leather jacket, a blaster tucked under his left arm, a blade up his right sleeve, something small and square and hard on his collar, pressing into her collarbone. Arms wrapped tight around her as he presses her back against the wall, or rather, where she’s pulling him back to shield her from the droid? That was what she was doing, right? He’s shielding her – no, wait, she’s shielding herself – from the droid. That isn’t attacking.

There’s blood in her eye again.

“It’s okay,” he’s still crooning in her ear, “okay, I’m not going to hurt you, easy, easy. You’re okay.”

The first words she ought to say are _who the hells are you?_ (followed swiftly by _get the fuck off me_ ) but before she can unclench her teeth, the stomp of boots echoes down the hall, muted under the relentless howl of the alarm sirens ( _Intruder! Intruder! Intruder! Fuck’s sake someone turn that off already!_ ) but coming closer. They need to run away now. She. She needs to run away. Let go and push hard and run.

His grip isn’t even all that tight. It doesn’t feel like a grapple hold at all, and he’s still talking to her, low and soothing. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just breathe, okay. You’re okay.”

Boots. Run! Why isn’t she running?

“I recommend we depart this vicinity,” the droid says suddenly, somehow managing to sound both disapproving and utterly apathetic. “Your cover is unlikely to hold up under scrutiny with an injured child in your arms.”

 _Child?_ That does it. Jyn unlocks her arms and her teeth and shoves at him, but he must move at the same time because she misses and her hands slide clumsily off his shoulders instead. He looks at her for a bare moment; his eyes are dark and sharp and they flick from her bloody face to her wrinkled school uniform to her shaking hands (still shaking, damn it, she curls them into cold fists and glares at him but he doesn’t react). “Come on,” he says in an accented voice. It’s fairly thick, he must have been born there. In the Atrivis sector. The accent is from the Atrivis sector. She’s not sure how she knows that. “This way,” he urges, gesturing at her over his shoulder.

He runs back towards the door that Jyn just sliced open _(Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!)_. “No,” she tells him, though her voice is oddly blurry. “Guards. Not there. Guards.” He glances back, and she jabs a finger at her head, then blinks, swipes at her left eye, still can’t see properly, why are head wounds always so _messy?_ Very inconvenient.

The stranger grimaces, but makes a sharp right turn and gestures for her to follow. She shouldn’t, but she does.

Well, there aren’t a lot of options.

_Intruder! intruder! Intruder!_

The droid follows close behind her, and she grits her teeth (bad idea, sharp pain shoots through her head, she relaxes her jaw again and focuses on his back) and runs. Right, another left, the stranger swipes a passkey and another door opens. Odd. He has a passkey and a KX droid, but if he’s Imperial then Jyn will eat her knife. Or make _him_ eat her knife. Yeah, that one.

“Here,” he ducks into another door, a small, dark room that looks like...storage? Jyn hesitates, but there’s a medkit on the wall behind him, and pounding boots in the hallway just around the corner, and he’s looking at her like ( _you’ll be okay_ ) she’s going to get them caught if she doesn’t shift her backside into gear so, karking hells, in she goes.

“Kay, lock the door, and check for a data port. See if you can’t patch in to the mainframe and get those alarms off.”

_(Intruder! Intruder! Intruder! the alarms scream, and at least he’s got the right idea.)_

The big droid clumps into the room and slouches towards the right side wall (she’s never seen a KX unit move like that – is it a programming bug? Does it…does he _chose_ to move like that?), shoving at a pile of metal crates with one hand. “Which will be in no way suspicious, of course.” The crates shunt aside as easily as child’s toys, and the droid flicks on a little light on his torso to scan the wall. “The Imperials will just think it was all a false alarm and go back to business.” He paused, turned his head. “That is statistically unlikely, by the way. I was practicing sarcasm. In case you were confused.”

The stranger sighs. “Please, Kay. The alarms. See what you can do.”

This would all fascinate Jyn, if she were paying any attention. As it is, she’s wrestling the heavy medkit open and peering at the arranged materials inside, looking for…something. Head injury. Bacta patch? Pills! There are pills for that. Concussion, she means. Right. Not that, not that, is that a speculum? In a med kit? _Weird._ Bandages, plasweave, very fancy. She puts a roll of that in her pocket. Hm, no, not taking the red...stick... _thing_ , no idea what it’s for and anyway she needs room for that large bottle of high end painkillers…Saw’s knee has been bothering him, ever since he lost it. Maybe the morphine will help.

“Here,” the man is suddenly behind her (man? He’s a lot taller and his face is pretty scruffy, but…now that he’s close, he looks a lot younger. Boy? Stranger.). He takes the bottle from her hand and pulls her around to face him. “Let me help you.”

That’s not a thing people say. Not to fourteen year old freedom fighters, not to rebel scum. Not to Jyn. She glares at him, suspicious. Also a little fuzzy. Or no, he’s fuzzy. Around the edges. “Why?”

“Because you have a severe head injury,” he explains in a patient voice, tugging at the bottle she doesn’t want to give up. “And you can’t tell the difference between anticonvulsants and acetaminophen.”

Jyn turns her glare from his face to the bottle. “I wasn’t going to eat these,” she tells him defensively.

“You should,” he shoots back. “They slow bleeding.”

Oh.

Yeah, alright. She’s a little compromised right now. She lets him peel the bottle from her fingers. Slouches against the wall. Glowers.

He doesn’t seem intimidated. Damn it. She really needs that growth spurt. And a huge suit of armor. And way more knives.

_Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_

Knives. Well, there at least she has something to offer. Jyn flicks her right wrist, lets her hidden switchblade dislodge from the holster and slip neatly into her hands. Her sticky, slightly bloody hands. Still, feels good to have it there. She doesn’t have a blaster or her truncheons, but she has a knife.

Now, medicine, and an escape route. She’s already mission complete here, just need to, you know, not die.

“Here,” the man (boy, _stranger_ ) says, and holds out two small yellow pills and a flask. Flask?

“Can’t take pills with hootch,” Jyn blurts at him, wrinkling her nose. “That’s stupid.”

“The damage to her cranial appears to be severe,” the droid comments from the wall, where he has apparently found his data port – or is just really excited about a spot and is pointing at it very hard. “I told you we should have left her.”

“It’s water,” the stranger says, again in that patient tone. “Water. Drink it, take the pills, okay?”

She probably shouldn’t, but if he wanted to kill her, he could have left her in the hall. Or let his droid do it. _Fine._ Jyn takes the pills. They scratch a little, going down her dry throat, but she waits a moment. Doesn’t start foaming at the mouth or losing her vision. Guess it wasn’t poison.

“No, it wasn’t,” he agrees, and she realizes that she said that last bit out loud. Kriff, she’s really messed up, isn’t she?

“How did this happen?” he’s rummaging through the med kit again, pulling out small bacta patches and plasweave sticky strips in bright orange. Orange? Who makes sticky bandages in orange? Oh, some of them are blue. That’s okay. She kind of likes blue. “The head injury,” he clarifies, comes closer again, hands full of orange and blue and bacta.

“Guard,” Jyn says shortly, but he raises an eyebrow at her and shakes his head, unimpressed with her attempts to hide the story.

She rolls her eyes (regrets it, the pills haven’t kicked in yet and it hurts), and shrugs. “I was in the offices, upper side. My business,” she says sternly at his look, and after a moment he nods, his eyes moving back to her hairline. His fingers are warm in her hair (wait, when did he-) but the bacta gel is cool and a little wet. “The alarms went off – _not me_ ,” that’s an important point to stress, she feels, and he must agree because he smiles a little and nods, “so I ran out, but there were a lot of guards suddenly and one of them saw me. So I threw him and ran away.”

“You…threw him?”

“Railing,” Jyn explains. Shit, didn’t she tell him she was in the upper offices? What did he think _upper_ meant? “He got a hit, though,” she frowns. She’s a little embarrassed by that, honestly, but Saw doesn’t like an incomplete report so she has to tell him. Tell Saw. Not the stranger. Except she is telling the stranger.

Damn it, kick _in_ already, pills. She needs a clear head if she’s going to survive this.

“Did he get a good look at your face?” The boy is asking earnestly. “Would he recognize you again?”

“No,” Jyn says absently, tilting her head a little towards him because his hands feel really nice on her aching scalp and to help him see what he’s doing better. “Because of the splat,” she clarifies. Clarity is important, in a report.

“Ah,” he replies after a beat. Then, “good.”

“Mm.” Jyn realizes her eyes are closed, which is dumb, so she snaps them open. Or tries to, anyway, because she’s tired and coming down from the adrenaline high and her head feels heavy. The stranger is standing in front of her, looking at her face with sharp, searching eyes, like he’s looking for something in particular in her features. He’s really only a few years older than her, now that she’s really looking, and sure, he’s got a beard but it’s kind of patchy and thin and his eyes are old but his mouth is young.

His mouth quirks a little. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, but thank you.”

Baked shit on a hot stone roof. She needs to get out of here, before her idiot mouth betrays her further.

“Wait, wait,” he puts a hand on her shoulder as she tries to push off from the wall and shove past him. “Kay just got the alarms off, but the guards are still deployed all over the factory. If you run out there now, you’ll run right into them again.” He presses her back gently, and she’s too tired now to resist. Also, he’s making sense. Which is annoying.

“Orange or blue?” he holds up two plasweave stickies, still with that little smile on the corner of his mouth. Jyn glares at his mockery, points at the blue. He tosses the orange back at the med kit and peels the small blue bandage off its wrapper. The faint fruity scent of bacta gel fills her nose, a different kind from the sharper, more chemical scent of the gel he’d rubbed into her hair over the open gash. She guesses that the cut must extend down over her forehead, because the boy reaches up and smooths her hair away from her left eye and presses the bandage firmly to the skin against her hairline.

He’s still smiling a little. Does he think it’s funny? Does he think she’s harmless, because she has a little cut?

“Thanks,” Jyn mumbles at him. “Now kark off.” She gives him her best death glare, hard and unblinking, and raises her knife meaningfully.

“Of course,” he raises his hands in the air and steps back, but the stupid kriffing smile stays in place.

“Ensign, I have located the files,” the droid says suddenly from behind him.

The boy’s ( _Ensign? Not Imperial – Alliance!_ ) eyes widen for a fraction as he sees Jyn note the rank, but he makes a vague attempt to cover it. “We don’t need files, Kay,” he says quickly, half turning from Jyn to speak over his shoulder.

The droid turns his head slightly and looks back at them. “We don’t need files,” he repeats carefully.

“No,” the boy says firmly, glancing at Jyn and then away, clearly trying to look nonchalant.

She wants to roll her eyes again, but she’s not sure the drugs have fully kicked in yet. So instead she flicks her knife away, crosses her arms and stares at him until he turns to face her again. “You’re stealing Imperial droid blueprints,” she guesses, because what else would he want here?

He grimaces, then sighs. “I’m not going to discuss it with you.”

“You should,” she retorts, and yes, the drugs must be working now because she feels significantly more coherent. Still tired, but clear-headed and ready for action again. “Because if you’re trying to snatch the blueprints I just corrupted, you’re probably going to get killed for no reason.”

“Corrupted?” He jumps, then steps forward, much closer than before. “Is _that_ what you’re doing here?”

 _Oops._ Maybe she’s not as clear-headed she thought. She opens her mouth to backtrack, maybe come up with a solid lie, but before she can, the droid chimes in, “It does make more sense that Saw Gerrera would want to damage the blueprints rather than attempt to duplicate them with his limited resources.”

There’s a moment of pure silence in the storage room.

And then Jyn erupts.

To his credit, the boy is quick on his feet and already dodging backwards, but even injured and disoriented, Jyn is _fast_. She ducks under his outflung hands and launches upward from her toes, jerking her knees up and landing hard against his chest. The crash throws him back, and she wants him able to talk to so she wraps her hands around the back of his head to keep him from cracking his skull on the hard floor. Her knuckles ache when they impact, him flat on his back and her kneeling on his chest, but she ignores it and lets go in favor of flicking out her switchblade again.

She can already hear the droid moving towards them, but she jams the blade against the boy’s neck and shouts, “Touch me and I will slice his throat wide open!”

The droid slows but doesn’t stop, and Jyn bares her teeth and looks the boy dead in the eye. “Call him off,” she orders.

“Kay,” he croaks, struggling to get his breath back. His hands are clenched in her school girl sweater, but he’s smart enough not to try and throw her off. There’s a drop of blood already trickling slowly down his neck; Jyn keeps her knives very sharp. “Kay, stand down. It’s okay.”

“I warned you that she would be unpredictable and violent,” the droid says in a tone that Jyn could swear sounds irritable, except droids can’t feel irritation, right? Whatever, not important.

“How,” Jyn leans down and gets right in his face, “do you know about Saw?” She widens her eyes and counts to five between blinks, and lets her teeth show just enough. She’ll never be as large or naturally intimidating as Saw, but she’s been working on her own brand of ‘terrifying crazy girl who will stab you in the heart for fun.’ It’s been pretty effective, actually, and should be especially so, since she’s got him completely pinned and helpless, her knife at his carotid artery.

The boy smiles.

He _smiles_.

“It’s good to see you again, Jyn,” he says calmly – or as calmly as can be expected when he’s struggling to breathe under her full weight and with a blade at his throat.

He knows her name.

Jyn’s mind is a cloud of panicked static, and the only clear thought is _what the fuck?_

He’s just looking at her, flat on his back and still gasping a little, but his eyebrows raised like he’s waiting for her to put two and two together and get –

“Cassian,” she says, and feels like the galaxy’s biggest idiot. His smile widens slightly, dangerously close to a grin now, and Jyn feels her cheeks flush a bit in response. He looks different, sure, what with the beard and the jacket and the…Imperial attack droid? What is _that_ about? And he’s taller, damn, a lot taller, but…now that she’s looking, she thinks there’s something in the eyes that is really familiar. He’s still smiling at her, probably laughing at her idiocy, because she should have known –

“I had a head injury,” she snaps, and pulls her knife away. She doesn’t get up though, can’t trust him enough for that. But she does move the blade back, and swipe at the little nick on his skin with her thumb to stop another drop of blood rolling onto his collar.

The humor dims on his face. “Noticed that,” he nods, eyes flicking to her hairline. “That’s why I didn’t try to, uh, remind you. I thought we perhaps had more pressing business.”

Business. Right, _business._ Jyn hops up from Cassian’s chest (ignores the relieved grunt as he sucks in a full breath of air and rubs at his gut) and turns back to the droid. “The only files I didn’t infect were administrative,” she tells it. Him? Sounds like a him. Whatever. _Focus._ “There’s nothing here worth stealing.”

“There is a forty-five percent chance that you are lying,” K2SO steps closer and looks down at her…way down. Wow, she really hadn’t noticed how tall that droid is – she barely reaches his waist. She has to crane her head back, which hurts, damn it, because the pills are (finally, thank _fuck_ ) kicking in, but she’s still got a headache.

Jyn turns to the side, steps up on the large table set against the wall, and heaves herself up. She stands on the table and now she’s almost able to look the droid square in the optics. “Your calculation and reasoning programs,” she says deliberately and as disdainfully as possible, “are flawed.”

The droid actually steps back, as close to a flinch as she’s ever seen a synthetic get. “There is nothing wrong with my programming,” he protests, and if droids can’t feel irritation then this one can fake it really well. “My datacore operates at an average of 1.4 exaFLOPS, whereas the average Human can barely manage a whole exaFLOP on a _good_ day. I certainly - ”

“Enough,” Cassian says quietly, cutting through the droid’s indignant retort and drawing Jyn’s eye back to him. “There’s no time for this. Jyn, are you certain that your virus has already destroyed all the files?”

“What time is it?”

“About 13:30,” he starts, but the droid, clearly still hung up on Jyn’s insult, interrupts.

“It is precisely 1300 hours, 17 minutes, and 42 seconds.”

“Thank you, Kay. Is the virus time-released?”

She nods, still standing on the table just in case the droid wants to go again. “It’s already working through the basic structure blueprints. But if you want the higher-order logic circuits,” she adds a touch reluctantly, “then the worm won’t get at those until…well, in about half an hour. There are alarms on those. I wanted to be out of the building before they went off.”

But they went off anyway, didn’t they? And then she ran into…

“Yes, it was us,” Cassian sighs, watching her face and smiling again, this time ruefully. “My intel on this facility was…outdated. I went through a scanner I thought my credentials could clear, but it had been reformatted.”

So he’d triggered the alarms, and they’d all just wasted about half an hour scrambling to stay out of an Imperial prison (or worse).

Well, nothing to do but make the best of it.

“You know, this factory can only sound one kind of alarm at a time,” she says slowly, dropping down and sitting on the edge of the table, “I mean, it can’t do the intruder alarm _and_ the file corruption alarm…”

“So if we set the intruder alarms back off again, no one will notice the virus chewing on their datadrives,” he finishes her thought, and moves to lean against the edge of the table next to her. Kay watches him do it, then actually gives a tiny shake of his metal head and moves back towards the data port on the wall.

“Your willingness to trust a Partisan with a history of attacking you is a poor decision on your part, Cassian,” he says a touch petulantly.

“Maybe,” Cassian shrugs. “The alarms will draw out the patrols again, you know.”

“That’s what fake identities are for,” Jyn points at the ID badge (which says he’s a twenty year old contractor with Mandalmatrix, a computer security company). “You’re, what, here to consult on anti-theft programs?”

“Anti-grafting,” he murmurs, mouth quirking into that little smile again. “When someone tries to alter the ownership protocol in a droid - ”

“I know what it means,” Jyn snarls, kicking her feet idly and glancing at the droid, back at the dataport. “That how you got him? Grafted him?”

“No,” Cassian shakes his head a touch harder than necessary. “I deleted the ownership program entirely, and took out the override chip.”

Jyn’s swinging feet still. “You what?”

“Kay is a free droid,” Cassian’s voice is soft, but there’s a touch of steel in it that warns Jyn not to sound too shocked or dismayed. Well, he is Alliance, and they claim to be invested in the freedom of all sentient life (hah, they _claim_ a lot of things, the Alliance, and never back them up). Apparently, Cassian really believes in that particular ideal.

She thinks about that for a moment. “And he fights Imps?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” She wrinkles her nose. “Hey, droid,” she calls. Kay does not disengage from the wall, but he turns his head to see her. “You try to throw me around again,” she says almost pleasantly, “I’ll shred your rusty circuits.”

“If you attack Cassian again, I will break your skinny neck,” the droid responds in the same tone.

Good. They understand each other. “Okay,” she turns back to Cassian, and to business. He’s smiling – _again_ , damn, doesn’t this guy know how to keep a good poker face? – but he seems to be paying close attention as Jyn outlines her plan.

“So you set off the Intruder alarms again,” she scowls at the thought of the obnoxious blaring, but oh well, can’t be helped. “I’ll give you a key to get through the virus to the files first, you steal the blueprints, and head for the north exit.” She points at his credentials again. “That’s where the contractor briefing rooms are. You grab a ‘trooper once you’re there, direct him towards the Director of Application Engineering’s office, okay? You think you can come up with a story that will get them to go there?”

“Yes, that’s easy enough,” he nods. “And you will be headed another way, of course?”

“Of course. Draw their focus to the upper west offices, you go north, I go east. Rejoin my,” she glances down at her uniform and smirks, “my class. Don’t want to miss the rest of the field trip.”

“An exciting day at school,” he mutters, mirroring her expression.

“So you get the blueprints, I get away, and the Imps get nothing,” she summarized. “Good?”

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully. “That could work. But…you would have to trust me.”

“Trust goes both ways,” Jyn shrugs at him. “I’ll do my bit, you do yours.”

“Six minutes remain until the Partisan virus goes live in the higher-order blueprints,” Kay calls. “Assuming she was telling the truth.”

“Then we’d better get moving. Here,” Jyn hops down and fishes around in the pockets of her silly, stolen uniform. The datadisk she pulls out is old and scuffed and has the label of a popular hologame on it, the kind of thing a fourteen year old girl might smuggle to play on her datapad in school. Its contents, of course, are a little less innocent. “Virus passkey,” she tells him, tossing it casually. She won’t need it anymore, anyway. That virus was tailored for this facility, and useless anywhere else. Cassian catches it, quirks his eyebrow a little at the label (a Human girl with flowing golden hair in a frilly dress riding some kind of pink mynock and grinning vapidly, she’s not sure what this game is supposed to be about, but it’s apparently all the rage with kids).

“See you around,” Jyn flashes a grin at him, “Ensign.” She checks that her knife is secure in her sleeve, then heads for the door.

“Jyn, wait.” Cassian’s hand is warm on her shoulder, but Jyn is not blushing about it. What a stupid reason to blush. He’s also standing a little too close when she turns around, but so what? She barely notices. “Look, I know Saw doesn’t much care for Alliance,” he pauses when she rolls her eyes, because _that’s_ putting it a bit mildly, “but if you’re ever in the Albarrio sector and need…”

“Need what?” She means it to sound insulted, or like a challenge, but he’s _too close_ , and her voice can’t seem to find its edge again.

“Here,” he shoves a small datachip into her hand. “It’s encrypted, but I doubt that will slow you down.” He smiles, his eyes warm, and Jyn swallows and grips the datachip hard.

The warmth of his hand is radiating down her arm now, and ridiculously, Jyn wants to rest her cheek against it. “What is it?”

“A dead drop site,” he sighs. “A place you can leave me a message, if you, uh, want to. Need anything. I can’t promise that I will be there,” his voice darkens slightly, “I can’t promise anything. But, if you want,” he shakes his head a little. “Just in case,” he finishes firmly, and drops his hand.

“You still think you’re going to die,” Jyn says flatly.

His jaw clenches.

“Three minutes until the virus is live,” Kay tells them.

“Good luck, Jyn,” Cassian nods to her, and steps back.

She doesn’t let herself think about it. She just lunges forward, wraps her arms around his chest as hard as she can, and presses her lips to his cheek. “Good luck, Cassian,” she murmurs, and then jerks away before he can respond (or the droid thinks she’s attacking again and really does break her neck).

She’s out the door without a backwards glance. Her kyber crystal bounces a little under her collar as she secures Cassian’s datachip in the hidden pocket by her throat, so she can keep it safe. It’s…nice, to have it there. Oddly comforting.

The walls start to wail again, _Intruder! Intruder! Intruder!_ but she ducks through the hallways and she knows she’s only a few turns away from the Guest Area where the school children are waiting for permission to leave. Jyn’s not worried. She’s got skills, a knife, and a place in an army that will never stop fighting the evil men who killed her family. She’ll be alright.

She decides to keep the datachip, though. A small concession to sentimentality, maybe, because she’ll definitely never actually _use_ it. Call on the Alliance? She’d have to be kriffing _desperate_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scientists are still trying to nail down exactly how much [processing power](https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/the-human-brain-vs-supercomputers-which-one-wins.html) the human brain can achieve, but I went with the generally accepted answer of "1 exaFLOP." Science is neat.
> 
> The various [security companies](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Security_companies) that Jyn mentions in this chapter are all canon. Mandalmatrix in particular works "computer security," which seemed like a great cover for Cassian. (And yes, I know the comic says he didn't get Kay until, what, a month before Rogue One? Whatever, the visual guide says Kay is 12 years old, and frankly, I like to think most of that was with Cassian.)
> 
> (As for the alarms - ever played a video game where one level had continuous alarms going off and it _drove you nuts_?)


	3. if your wish be to close me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _or if your wish be to close me, i and_   
>  _my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,_   
>  _as when the heart of this flower imagines_   
>  _the snow carefully everywhere descending;_

 

Jyn is sixteen years old the third time they meet, and she’s desperate.

Not that she’s letting it show. Chin level, mouth relaxed, shoulders down and back. Eyes open, no tears. Never, ever tears. _To show weakness is to show the enemy a target_. Saw taught her that. Saw taught her a lot of things. Saw taught her to survive.

But then Saw dumped her in a war zone, so she’s not really inclined to be grateful right now.

The Tamsye Prime op was supposed to be quick, a lightning strike, in and out and only a smoking hole in the ground behind her. But something went wrong; Jyn’s not entirely sure what and at the moment can’t spare the energy to obsess about it. It had ended with Saw handing her a fresh blaster and telling her that he would be back in the morning, with a shuttle. She just had to hold the line, _wait for me, my child, I will return for you_.

It takes her two days of sitting in a cold, dark, stinking bunker to realize that Saw isn’t coming back, that something has happened to him, something has gone _wrong_. Another three days to fight her way through the jungle around it until she makes it to a town with a spaceport, eating what little creatures she can kill and dodging the air patrols that still scream across the planet, hunting rebels, hunting her. A whole week to make her slow, miserable way (on unreliable Outer Rim public transports paid for with stolen credits and one brief, tense ride with a shady smuggler) back to the last known Partisan rendezvous point on Tatooine. She spends the time calculating, trying to imagine all the ways that Saw might be in trouble or captured, and who she can call on to help her get him back, what resources she can pull, what she might have to promise -

She’s not in the seedy cantina in Mos Eisley an hour before she learns that Saw Gerrera has _not_ been captured or killed by Imperials as she feared, but is alive and free and currently raising hell in the Mid Rim, apparently completely unconcerned for the fighters he recently lost ( _abandoned_ ) on Tamsye Prime. He has also pulled the Tatooine cell off-planet, moving the remaining soldiers to another cell somewhere else, no one knows where. Even the quiet Bothan who ran a little restaurant that fronted for Partisan information brokers has been closed up and moved out.

It takes her a solid five minutes to understand that Saw hasn’t just left her behind, he’s cut off every access point to the Partisans that she had, too. But she does understand it, eventually. It works its way into her boney shoulders first, then trickles down her spine, floods through her aching chest and her hollow belly and finally, finally, penetrates into her fucking _thick_ skull.

He actually left her. He _dumped_ her. She spent weeks desperately fighting to get back to him but she should have _known_ because he just…left.

Jyn is alone. Her stomach is as empty as her pockets now, and she’s tired and scared and standing in the middle of a cantina full of some of the galaxy’s worst sentient predators, and she is alone.

She escapes the cantina and slinks through the streets for hours, mind hissing with static and heart pounding in her chest. Luckily, her instincts take over when her brain shuts down because someone tries to jump her (Humans, two, male, slaver badges on their robes, the taller one gets her knife in his belly and the shorter one loses a finger), but she doesn’t worry about it much, she’s got real problems now.

She needs food. Shelter. A recharged blaster pack, because she ran out of ammo on day two of defending that bunker from Imps, the bunker she thought Saw was coming back to, the bunker she thought mattered strategically, because why else would he leave her there? (Why would he leave her?) She needs to get out of Mos Eisley, she can’t even afford water here and there’s no work for a teenage Human – none that she wants to do, anyway. She’s not a merc, she’s a soldier. She doesn’t kill for money, she doesn’t steal for profit, she doesn’t…

But then, if she doesn’t do that – then what _does_ she do? What can she do?

Her stomach is cramping.

Jyn reaches up and curls her fingers tight around her mother’s necklace, lets herself think for a few minutes of warm rain and black shores, then moves her fingers to the little pocket hidden in her collar. A silly sentiment, a child’s promise, but if it worked, if he answered, if he was still alive…A stupid hope, maybe, but the only one she had.

Jyn pulls out a small datachip and flicks the switch. A little blue light flashes on the top, and she presses the light against her palm and watches a name followed by a series of numbers and symbols illuminate in her skin. She already knows the planetary coordinates, of course, figured that out a long time ago, but she hasn’t bothered with the more precise map points at the end of the sequence, the ones that tell her the exact location of an exact console where she can supposedly leave a message for – well, someone who might be willing to help.

She’ll think of something to offer in turn by the time she gets there. First, passage out of here. The planet Scipio isn’t too far from Tatooine. She can make it by tomorrow, if she’s lucky.

-

She isn’t lucky, but she still makes it to the city of Traxus within the week. It’s fucking freezing on this ice ball, and she has to spend the first hour dirtside hunting for a clothing shop where she can lift a jacket and scarf. Then another two hours looking for the console, which turns out to be a public access terminal just outside of a small bank (half the buildings on Scipio are banks, the Imperial Vaults are here; Jyn knows all about them because Saw made her study the security sys– but she’s not thinking about Saw. Not now. Not ever.)

Jyn lifts an ident chip from a passing Muun (everyone here is so bloody tall, she stands out like a sore thumb, and it makes her nervous), accesses the terminal under the stolen identity, and opens an account on a free net-mail holosite. _This is foolish_ , a voice rages in her head, _foolish and weak._ Has she sunk so low that she must beg for aid from the people she once considered cowards? Jyn swallows and grits her teeth. _Yes_ , she thinks defiantly. _Apparently_. Then she taps out a quick message to the fake name on the datachip with cold, shaking fingers:

 

 

To: Kaarl Dalgis

From: a comedian

Subj: hello

How are you hope you are well. If you haven’t given in to the math yet it would be nice to see you again if you’re ever in this neighborhood. Tell your tall friend his calculations still suck. I’ll be around.

 

 

There. That seems safe enough (it isn’t, nothing’s ever safe enough, but if she makes it any more convoluted he won’t understand it – maybe he won’t understand this?), so she sends it and wraps her arms tight around her shivering body. _Foolish and weak_ , Saw growls again in her head, but he abandoned her to her own fate, so he doesn't get a say anymore. Fuck, it’s so _kriffing_ _cold_ out here. She needs funds, shelter, food (she thought it was tough keeping the cadre fed, but keeping just herself fed has proven to be infinitely more difficult), and she won’t find any of it standing around out here.

Jyn spends the first day on Scipio haunting the shadowy corners of seedy bars and low end gambling halls (not many, on this very wealthy and very Imperial planet, but enough), until she gets paid by a local gang to slice the gambling machines to increase their win streaks. She checks the console at night, no answer to her message. The gang gets cocky, wins too much and crows too loud about it (idiots, they are definitely going to get caught), so Jyn comes back the second day and gets a job with the gambling house owner to beef up his security on the gambling machines. No message shows up that day either. The third day, she runs errands for the grateful gambling hall owner, picking the occasional pocket and ducking in and out of alleys to avoid the patrols that march through the light snow flurries. No message.

On the fourth day, she catches sight of herself in the window of the bank and sees that her cheeks are hollow and her eyes ringed with dark circles. She’s been trying to keep herself clean, because clean and healthy looks successful, she’s learning, and that is more inviting to potential employers than skinny and dirty and desperate. But there’s only a public sonic in a nearby gym for mid-level bankers, and it's hard to sneak in and out of that lest someone note the small, shabbily-dressed Human girl. So her hair is tangled and lank and her skin looks faintly grubby. She looks like…well, he’d called her a feral child before, but now it actually looks true.

This is stupid. He’s not coming, and wouldn’t help even if he did. He probably doesn’t even remember her. Jyn needs to stop hanging around on this frozen hellhole and go…and go…somewhere else. Somewhere she can find real work, or at least somewhere she can blend a bit better.

Jyn scowls at her reflection, turns sharply on her heel, and walks face-first into the man who is walking up behind her.

She jerks back instinctively, reaching for her switchblade, but the man is faster and clamps a hand down on her left forearm as if he knows exactly where her weapon is hidden. A spike of panic joins the irritation in her head, then she properly focuses on his face and goes still.

“Hello,” Cassian says quietly, his mouth quirking a little as he watches the recognition spark in her eyes. “Nice to see you again.”

"Cassian," she whispers, stupidly, because someone could be listening, what is _wrong_ with her? She bites her lip and grimaces in apology, but for some reason his mouth curves a little more and he shrugs.

"Kaarl," he corrects gently. "For now," he adds under his breath, a touch reluctantly.

"Kestrel," she replies in the same tone, not sure why she hates giving him this ridiculous name that she invented on her way here. She doesn't let herself dwell on it, though, and anyway, most of her thoughts are circling on one shocking realization.

Cassian's here. He actually came.

He’s dressed like a low-level banking intern, in a suit that hangs just slightly off his frame, a heavy overcoat, and worn but well-polished shoes. He’s taller, still a bit gangly in the manner of teenage boys, with his hair cut short in the current Core world fashion, and he’s clean shaven this time. It makes him look younger than he probably is, until she looks closer and sees the sharpened angles of his face, as if time and tension have carved away at any lingering baby fat and left his features narrow and hard. His dark eyes are still too old for his age, and faint lines are already forming around the corners.

Those eyes narrow as he scans her in turn, and obviously doesn’t like what he’s seeing in her thin body or faded, torn clothes (she still hasn’t found anything to replace the fatigues she wore into battle with S- that she wore on Tamsye Prime, and the scarf and thin coat she boosted were in the bargain bin for a reason). Jyn bristles immediately, because who is he to _judge_ her? It isn’t like she’s had an easy time of it, these last few weeks. It isn’t like she has a bunch of Alliance buddies running around at her back making sure she’s fed and clean, does she?

She doesn’t have anyone.

Jyn swallows, takes a deep breath. _Not helping. Talk to him. Charm him into helping you_. _Say something pleasant_. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she says awkwardly, and feels like a moron.

Cassian raises an eyebrow at her, then glances over her shoulder at the bank window. To her alarm, his face suddenly goes blank. “We should get out of the cold,” he says in a tone that’s just a little too casual. Jyn sets her jaw and glares at him as he steps forward and reaches like he’s going to grab her kriffing arm and drag her about, which he most certainly is _not_ going to fucking do. “Unless you’d rather go chat with your friends?” he mutters, angling his body slightly to the side so she can see around him (he’s too tall now for her to see over his shoulder).

Jyn swears fervently in Bocce as she peers around and catches a glimpse of the cheating gang she’d helped out in the gambling halls. They must have found out why their winning algorithm doesn’t work anymore. They’re huddling at a nearby street corner, eyeing Jyn with thinly disguised hostility, probably only waiting for the witness to move on. There are five of them, all armed, and the biggest one is close to two meters tall and heavily muscled. They’re tattooed and scarred and clearly pissed off, but also just as clearly not trained combatants. Brawlers at best, she figures, the kind of fool she could wipe the floor with, at her peak…but, well, she’s not exactly at her peak right now, is she? That’s the whole fucking problem. “Yeah,” she grunts, pissed off about running from a bunch of undisciplined thugs but not seeing an alternative. “Let’s go.”

“This way,” Cassian actually does take her arm; she jerks in his grip but he smoothly transfers her hand to his elbow like they’re a poncy Inner Rim couple on a lovely kriffing _date_. “Your hands are freezing,” he shakes his head at her and rubs at her knuckles with his free hand. It…actually chafes a little life back into her frigid fingers, so she jams her other hand into her pocket and glowers but doesn’t yank away. His body blocks the cold breeze whistling down the street, and she drifts a little closer, telling herself it's just so they won't look suspicious.

"Where's your friend?" She asks grouchily, speaking in a low voice so he has to lean a little closer to hear. (Her face is red with cold and there's only so much she can do to stop her teeth from chattering, so if she has to resort to trickery to steal a little of his warmth, then so be it.)

Cassian tugs her arm a little further around his, which winds her in closer to him, and does in fact lean down to answer in the same low tone. "He's near enough," he says pleasantly, throwing a quick look over his shoulder before meeting her eyes. "The chill doesn't agree with his joints, so I leave him where it's warm unless he's needed."

"Lucky him," she mumbles, raising a questioning eyebrow. He grimaces and nods, which tells her the gang is following. 

"He doesn't leave me much choice," Cassian smiles a little ruefully. "Not unless I want to hear an exact calculation of how the temperature is reducing efficiency." He pauses, chuckles quietly. "He's never really gotten over that comment about his calculation programs being wrong, by the way. He still grouses about it every time you're mentioned."

She likes his laugh, Jyn thinks inanely, and then realizes what an idiot she's being and wipes the stupid grin off her face. Belatedly, her brain scrambles to process what he's said: every time she's mentioned? What, by the Alliance? Why would _they_ be talking about her? She's about to demand an explanation, but then he glances behind them again and frowns a little, and she decides it can wait until they're somewhere safer. "Stay with me," he says softly, and walks a little faster, pulling her by the arm until she adjusts to the pace.

He takes her several blocks, until at last they stop at a small restaurant tucked in between a laundromat and yet another bank. Cassian drops her arm but places his hand on the small of her back as they walk in. She grits her teeth and takes it, because she’s about to ask for his help and she can handle a little patronizing behavior if it makes him more willing to agree.

They get a small table in the back, near the kitchens, which is good. The front door is blocked by the gang, who shuffle across the street and lounge about like they have all night. So the kitchen is probably her only exit. Cassian sits across from her and calls to the waiter, who brings them cheap cups of some kind of dark tea and promises to come back when they’ve had a moment to look at the menu. Jyn ignores him, focused on Cassian and running her best offers through her head. She has no credits, but she’s got data from some of Saw’s last operations that should be worth something to Alliance. She hopes.

She’s still mulling it over when the waiter comes back, and Jyn tenses because she hasn’t had a chance to pick any pockets or get her payment from the gambling hall owner for the errands yet. Cassian, however, orders something she doesn’t recognize for the both of them and then quietly goes back to drinking his tea while he watches her. His casual generosity is both a relief and an annoyance, and it temporarily scatters her thoughts.

Before she can scramble them back together, Cassian leans one elbow on the table and says, “Naboo is very lovely this time of year, I’m told.” He raises an eyebrow at her and taps one finger idly on his teacup. “Very tourist-friendly.”

Jyn stares at him. Is this meant to be some kind of test? A code phrase she’s supposed to know? Or is he just, what, making idle conversation while he waits for her to explain herself?

At her silence, he sits back and frowns slightly, though he wipes it smooth quickly enough. “I’m surprised you decided not to go with your family this year,” he continues carefully. “I’m sure they miss you.”

Oh. _Oh. Bastard_. It’s Saw, that’s what he’s talking about. Saw must be on Naboo and Cassian is prodding her to find out why she isn’t with him – and probably to find out exactly what the Partisans are up to there, too. The Onoam objective, she thinks, Saw must have moved that up on the priority list, and briefly she wonders who is going to be his point man if she’s gone – _karking hells_ , she’s not thinking about this. And she’s absolutely _not_ going to explain to some smug Alliance _arsehole_ why she’s not with the Partisans right now. Anymore. _Ever_.

Cassian’s hand is suddenly warm on top of hers, and Jyn jumps because she’d been so deeply entrenched in her sudden fury that she didn’t see him move. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, voice dropping below the gentle chatter of the restaurant. “it's not important, alright? I’m sorry, Kestral.” His demeanor has gone from nonchalant to intent, and Jyn realizes that her lip is curled back and her eyes are stinging. She bites down on the inside of her cheek to distract her stupid body and relaxes her face, drops her shoulders, and slowly pulls back her hand.

“’s fine,” she mumbles. “I just…” she swallows, gets her voice under control, then shrugs. “Who needs Naboo anyway, when it's just so  _pleasant_ here?” She makes an exaggerated grand gesture towards the front window, encompassing the cold, snowy streets, the incoming dark, and the soberly clad locals. “The slushy snow is really nice,” she tells him mock earnestly, taking a long drink of the tea and savoring the warmth that slides down her throat and into her chest. “And the architecture is just fascinating. All those banks."

He nods slowly, relaxing back into his own calm detachment as he picks his own tea back up. “I always found grey boxes particularly inspiring myself.”

“Well who doesn’t?” She glances out of the front window, at the gang that’s still gathered loosely across the street. Don’t they want to get out of the cold? Oh, it looks like one of them has started a fire in a trash can. Unless a ‘trooper patrol comes through, they can potentially wait all night. Wonderful. "It's all those corners. Very moving."

“So you've given up comedy, and you’re an aspiring architect now?” The faint note of humor snaps Jyn’s attention back into the restaurant, and she gives him a wan smile. It’s the opening she needs, so she takes a deep breath and goes for it.

“I’m...exploring my options,” she says quietly, and watches his face to see if he understands.

His eyes flick from her ratty stolen scarf to her wrinkled clothes and finally back to her tired face. “How is that working out for you?” The words make her bristle again, but his tone is gentle enough (and she’s tired enough) that she lets it go.

“Been better,” she admits a little reluctantly. She can’t quite meet his eyes as she says it, because…well, if it had been painful to her pride to write to him in the first place, actually sitting in front of him like this is _devastating_. If she were a little less hungry, a little less cold, a little less afraid, she never could have done this.

But she _is_ hungry, and cold and afraid and… _ebajam varbeca troac, just get it over with_. “Don’t suppose you have any helpful advice?” She manages, staring hard at her teacup and trying her damndest to sound offhand and unconcerned.

Cassian hums softly under his breath, but the waiter choses that moment to come back with two large platters of hot vegetable soup and meat-filled sandwiches, and Jyn’s whole world suddenly narrows down to the fragrant steam rising off the food. She glances at Cassian, who gestures to her plate with a little smile, and for several glorious minutes, they sit silently and eat. Jyn forces herself to pause and breathe between each beautiful, filling bite, so she won’t make herself sick (or look like a starving mongrel, because he already knows too much about how bad things are for her right now). She takes the opportunity to study him a little, once her stomach is a little fuller and she can force herself to pay attention to something else. He still eats like an automaton, she thinks with a little humor, _clink, clink, clink,_ like eating is just a process he has to complete on schedule. She watches his quick glances out the window toward the gang, the way he tilts his head slightly as the cook and the waiter start a low conversation nearby, how he angles his body when someone new walks in the door to briefly shield his face. All while giving the impression that he’s lost in his own thoughts.

“If you’re still undecided,” he says abruptly, still looking out the window. “There are some openings at my company. I could,” now he turns and looks at her again, and Jyn hastily swallows the food bulging in her cheek. “I could perhaps get you,” he makes a random gesture with his fork, hunting for the right word, and at last settles on, “an interview.”

Her first thought was a triumphant _that was easier than I expected_ , followed closely by _I didn’t even offer him anything yet_. But she’s not looking to be a charity case, so she says quickly, “I can make it worth your while,” and holds up one hand flat in a traditional bargaining gesture.

But he doesn’t reach out and tap her palm to start the haggle. Weirdly, he waves her away with an unconcerned motion. “It’s alright, keep it,” he says hastily. “You might need it later. We’ll just call it a favor.” His smile widens a little, and all of Jyn’s internal alarms go off at once. He’s _far_ too pleased about this, and he doesn’t even want anything in turn? Even among the Partisans, soldiers had to bargain among themselves for favors or to trade weapons and goods. And though she’s only been alone in the galaxy for a few weeks, Jyn’s already learning that it’s even worse out here, where _nothing_ is ever given for free. And worst of all, _a favor_ , he says, and she’s not sure what that means but it’s so vague that her stomach clenches and her heart speeds up. She’s young, sure, but despite Saw’s glowering protection, she lived for eight years in a barracks. Not to mention the lessons she’d been taken aside and taught by women like Magva Yarro and Idryssa Barruck, hardened warrior women who explained things like puberty and sex and the kinds of things men might want from a young, delicate-featured girl. ( _Especially when they don’t know what kinds of things that girl can do with her knife_ , Magva had grinned at her, and thrown her own nine-inch blade deep into a training dummy’s neck.)

“I’m not empty-handed,” Jyn tries one more time, holding her hand out stubbornly. She’s not going to be indebted to him, if that’s what he's trying to do.

“It’s alright,” Cassian repeats, and he reaches out but instead of tapping her palm, he grips her wrist gently. “I’ll take care of it, Jyn,” he promises softly.

The pleasant weight of food in her belly turns hard and heavy, and Jyn swallows back the wave of nausea. He doesn’t understand. He’s still smiling, and part of her yearns to trust that smile, but the numb horror of the past weeks crushes down on the feeling and smothers it inside her. In her head, she hears Saw’s rough voice, _wait for me, my child, I will return for you._ (Even dimmer, a quiet man murmurs _everything I do, I do to protect you.)_

He thinks he’s saving her.

Jyn closes her eyes, and makes her choice.

“Okay,” she replies just as softly (chin level, mouth relaxed, shoulders down and back, eyes open, no tears) and nods to him, curling her fingers lightly around his wrist in mirror of his own. “A favor.”

“Good,” he says immediately, and then pulls his arm back and reaches for his pocket. “I’ll need to make a quick call. Wait here.” A little louder he says, “I’m going to run to the ‘fresher, be right back.”

She nods, watches him as he walks towards the back of the restaurant. He pauses, glances back at her, and because he came, because he fed her and warmed her and at least tried to be kind (even if it was only an act, even if it was only to get something from her, still, it’s the most kindness she’s been given in…a long time), because he is the closest thing to friend she has, Jyn smiles at him. She makes it as warm and sweet and grateful as she can, lets him see how much it meant to her that he answered when she called. He blinks, startled by the show of emotion, and then the smile he gives back is just as warm and shockingly _real._ For just a heartbeat, Jyn reconsiders her plan.

Then he winks at her (or rather…blinks at her, slowly, although she _thinks_ it was meant as a wink), and turns sharply towards the kitchen doors, vanishing through them. Probably gone to make his call in the back alley behind the restaurant. She has maybe ten minutes, she guesses.

Jyn is out of her seat and out the front door before the kitchen doors stop swinging behind him. She tightens her scarf and makes sure the ends are tucked carefully away, not swinging loose where someone can grab at them and choke her. Across the street, one of the gangsters sees her and slaps at his buddy’s arm, and they start to turn towards her. Jyn moves faster than they can mobilize, however. In the space of a few seconds, she bolts across the street, takes a running leap at the biggest, meanest looking of the gangsters, and slams into his chest like a battering ram. She throws up a boney elbow and catches him hard in the windpipe, flicking out her switchblade into her left hand at the same time. The big, tattooed bloke goes down under her like a tree crashing into the forest floor, and Jyn rolls off his chest, up to her feet, and has her blade against the second biggest gangster’s throat before any of them can do more than shout in surprise.

“There are two ways this will end,” she growls, and they all freeze. “The easy way,” she tilts her head thoughtfully, “where we work together to get rich, or the hard way,” and now she lets herself grin, eyes wide and showing just enough teeth to look truly crazy, “where I kill each and every one of you pathetic nerf-fuckers.”

There’s a long silence, punctuated by the hacking coughs of the big man on the ground and the slightly wheezing gasps of the skinny man under her blade. Then a third gangster asks tentatively, “How rich?”

Jyn’s smile sharpens.

“Remember that gambling hall? Turns out the owner has a nice, big, _very full_ safe behind that Imperial flag on his back wall.” She quirks an eyebrow. “Interested?”

And they are interested. Very interested, so much that even the big guy on the ground stops grumbling and hacking and turns his head to listen. “Well then,” she steps away from her victim and jerks her head. “Let’s go.”

Jyn snaps her switchblade closed and leads the way down the street, detailing her plan to knock over the gambling hall and get them all off planet. With an actual crew to help her, it will be easy, and then she can ditch the lot of them on the next planet and move on. The gangsters listen and nod and she can see at least two of them plotting to turn on her the second they can, but she’s got a knife and a blaster and years of experience with people trying to kill her, and she can handle it. She can handle this. She doesn’t need to be _saved_. She will survive this, she tells herself fiercely. She will _survive_.

Jyn marches down the street to a salvation of her own making, ignoring the cold that bites at her, and she does not look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the canon timeline for Jyn Erso's life/age is a bit hosed, I'm working this fic off a loose interpretation of [the campaigns of Saw Gerrera](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Campaigns_of_Saw_Gerrera%27s_Partisans) and a few creative liberties with the pre-Rogue One timeline. Saw isn't supposed to be in Naboo until [two years](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Assassination_of_Quarsh_Panaka) after leaving Jyn, but then it doesn't make sense for her to be 23 only five years after he left her, either, so we're going to just stick our fingers in our ears and yell "I do what I want," okay? 
> 
> [Scipio](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scipio) is a frozen planet run by "banking clans," covered in large, powerful vaults and very, very Imperial. The main species there are the very tall, very fastidious, very wealthy [Muun](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Muun), so it really is a terrible place for a small, grubby, former-rebel-soldier Human teenager to attempt to hide out. Fortunately, Jyn is determined and resourceful (even if she forgets that for a little while, after the shock of her second abandonment).
> 
> [Idryssa Barruck](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Idryssa_Barruck) and [Magva Yarro](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Magva_Yarro) were two women in the Partisans that Jyn would have known, and both seem like they would not be big fans of letting a young girl run around with all these rough soldier/rebel/criminal characters without giving her at least a little friendly (if somewhat bitter) advice.


	4. the power of your intense fragility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She still trying to scrub the blood from under her fingernails when he says quietly into her ear, “I looked for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals_   
>  _the power of your intense fragility: whose texture_   
>  _compels me with the colour of its countries,_   
>  _rendering death and forever with each breathing_
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> \- e e cummings

Jyn is nineteen years old the fourth time they meet, and she’s fucking _furious_. She roughly shoulders her way through the evening crowds of Haidoral Administrative Center One (which, by the way, is a _stupid fucking name_ for a city, trust Imperials to ruin _everything_ ), and grits her teeth so hard her jaw aches.

It had been a perfect job. Not just a good job, not a sweet deal with some issues to work around, but a perfect kriffing job, easy to get in, a big fucking haul, hardly any resistance, and an easy out again. She and her crew (two Rodians, a Human, and a Mirialan) had gotten in and gotten out without a hitch, and were looking at ten thousand credits _a piece_ from the haul, and then the Mirialan, Henna, had gotten greedy and turned on the rest of them at the last thrice-damned minute. It wasn’t Henna’s betrayal that ate at Jyn’s nerves and turned her vision red around the edges, though. No, she’d been _ready_ for that shit, ready for it from the second she’d met this gang of skilled but disaffected losers and planned the heist against an Imperial-affiliated trade corporation. What stung, what really chapped Jyn’s ass, was that Henna hadn’t even done the decent thing and tried to off the others herself. No, she’d gone and snitched on the lot of them to _Imperial security forces_.

Jyn had been forced to abandoned a sweet haul of thousands of credits worth of stolen weapons because her former teammate thought it was a good idea to involve Imperials in, fuck, _anything_.

‘Course, it hadn’t worked out so well for Henna, had it? The Imp officer in charge of the ambush had grinned at the Mirialan and ordered her clapped in chains with the rest of them, and Jyn had savored the look of outraged shock on that green face for a full three seconds before deciding _to all the many hells with this_ and pulling her truncheons. It had been a hairy fight, but one of the Rodians had dropped a smoker grenade, and Jyn had made her escape.

But so had Henna. Jyn had caught sight of her slipping out a side door even while her own attention was largely taken up by the grasping stormtroopers and the screaming of blaster bolts past her head.  So Jyn had cracked a few more skull-helmets, shouted at the Rodians to throw the skrogging smoker already, and then bailed through a window as the Imps flailed around in the smog like violent morons. She’d taken about ten seconds to make sure none of her injuries were major and mourn the truly colossal treasure she was leaving behind in that warehouse, and then grimly set off into the bustling city, hunting her former “teammate.”

That back-stabbing green bitch is free in the world, probably making plans to escape tonight and get away without a scratch, and Jyn is not about to let that happen.

It’s almost embarrassingly easy to find Henna, a fact which only enrages Jyn more, because the _karking shutta_ clearly isn’t taking Jyn seriously as a threat. The Mirialan had the bloody gall to screw Jyn over (well, to screw _Tanith Ponta_ over, but Jyn’s put a lot of effort into that alias over the last year, it should _mean_ something to the lowlifes on Haidoral Prime by now), and now the cocky little _poodran_ is literally sitting in the same bar where they spent three weeks planning this job together. It’s disrespectful, that’s what it is. Jyn glares through the window of the bar for a few moments, watching Henna swirl her drink, nervously turning what looks like a datachip over and over in her other hand. She’s jittery, looking back over her shoulder at the main entrance every few seconds and gulping large swallows of her cheap beer. So at least she has some vague idea of how much shite she’s stepped in, good.

Jyn sidles in the side entrance and stalks through the crowd towards Henna’s hunched over back, fingering her truncheon meditatively. She’s not going to kill Henna – she had a brief moment of temptation in the warehouse, true – but the initial blinding rage has passed now, and anyway, it will be better to leave Henna as an example and a marked woman in the underground. No one in Jyn’s line of business will ever risk working with a known snitch again.

But a spectacular bruise, maybe a broken nose, yeah, that will drive the point home nicely. Be pretty fucking cathartic for Jyn, too.

She steps around the last table in between them, and Henna sees her. To her credit, she doesn’t shout or fall off her barstool, but she flinches and then goes very still, eyeing Jyn like a rat suddenly catching sight of the incoming tooka. _Yes_ , Jyn thinks with a little edged smile, _you are in deep bantha shit, mate_.

“Tanith,” Henna fumbles a painfully fake smile. Jyn lets her own smile flatten and vanish, stares at the Mirialan with cold, unimpressed eyes, blinking as little as possible and leaning silently against the bar.

It’s her best Silent Threatening Stare, and it works like a charm. Henna visibly pales to a lighter shade of green, and her fingers shake so badly she drops the datachip. “Wow,” she tries to slog onwards doggedly, “That sure was a mess back there, right? Fucking Imps, never keep their bargains.”

She pauses, tentatively smiling again, as if she hopes Jyn will join in on a round of bitching about Imperial interference, like it wasn’t wholly Henna’s fault the bucket-heads fucked them over in the first place. Jyn does not react, still staring, and the Mirialan switches tactics. “Glad you made it out of that mess, really.” She clasps both hands around her beer bottle like it’s a lifeline that will pull her out of the shitpile she’s landed herself in, chattering nervously as she watches Jyn’s motionless face. “I mean, it was nothing personal, you know? You’re a good person to work with. Good rep. Everybody knows Ponta does professional work.”

Jyn reaches out, slowly, and plucks the datachip off the bar. It’s a ticket, she notes distantly, probably Henna’s planned escape from the system. Henna watches her take it with a little shudder, but doesn’t protest. Behind the bar, the burly Human woman who runs the place eyes them both warily, but hasn’t ordered them out yet. Jyn doesn’t plan to cause trouble here, though. No, they’re going to go outside, somewhere quiet, and Jyn is going to punch this cringing little creep right in the -

The front door of the bar opens, and four ‘troopers stomp in.

 _Hot shitbricks on a platter,_ did the damn Mirialan contact every Imp in the karking _system?_ Jyn ducks behind a group of suddenly silent drinkers to stay out of their sight, but to her surprise, the snitch actually flinches again and ducks her head down further, turning her back square against the ‘troopers. They’re not here for Henna, or at least, not to help her out. But this isn’t a patrol spot, and the bar patrons are mostly Human, so not the sort of place the Imps like to routinely shake up just to show that they can. 

So what the –

Cassian is in the bar.

\- Jyn’s body freezes, everything freezes –

A ‘trooper passes between them, headed for the bartender, and Jyn sucks in a huge lungful of air that somehow still leaves her gasping and light headed.

He’s not looking at her, not looking at anyone, hunched in his chair in a corner table against the far wall. She shouldn’t be able to recognize him, she thinks vaguely (she does, instantly, without question) because he’s pale and haggard, his hair so long it brushes his shoulders, his beard just on the wrong side of unkempt. His clothes are clean enough, but he has one hand clutching his jacket tight around his chest, and something in the careful, stiff way he holds his shoulders sets off all of Jyn’s alarms.

His eyes are darting around the bar under half-closed eyelids, his mouth set in a harsh line and his hair swinging down to partially cover his face. The ‘troopers are here for _him_ , she realizes with a bolt of clarity.

As if to confirm her thoughts, the lead ‘trooper suddenly buzzes into the watchful silence of the bar. “Attention, citizens,” he says briskly. “We are in pursuit of a terrorist fleeing justice. For your safety, we require full cooperation and any information pertinent to the location and capture of this fugitive.”

At the bar, Henna’s green head perks up. Even from her angle, Jyn can see calculation flashing behind those greedy little eyes. Henna isn’t a complete idiot, or Jyn would never have worked with her in the first place. Her eyes flick back towards Jyn’s shadowy spot, and then towards the ‘troopers. Well, that’s no good. The Mirialan clearly doesn’t know Imps as well as she thinks, because if she believes that stormtroopers will believe the word of a Non-Human over a Human, one with a Coruscanti accent no less, then she’s dead wrong. But if she tries to turn Jyn over to the Imps ( _again,_ twice in the same day _,_ Force _damn_ it! _)_ it will cause a scene, and Cassian might get swept up in it.

If Jyn leaves, right now, she’ll be free. Henna’s reputation is already ruined, and Jyn’s got a backup exit that will get her off world in a matter of hours if she's lucky. If she leaves, right this second, Cassian won’t ever know she was there. She can wash her hands of it all.

The ‘troopers are almost to the bar, almost right next to Henna, and in the bare seconds left, Jyn makes a choice.

“Hey, whelk-fucker,” she shouts randomly into the bar; she picks up the nearest drink at hand and flings it at the largest body she sees (a _wookiee_ , oops, definitely going to need a quick escape), then adds in Bocce, “ _tvoya mat' soset pal'tsy nog!”_

The wookiee slams to his feet with an outraged roar, the tables around him erupt with scrambling patrons desperate to get out of the line of fire, and the whole mess effectively draws the stormtroopers’ attention well away from either Jyn or Cassian. Which is perfect, because it gives Jyn time to snatch her own smoker grenade from her belt and toss it smack into the middle of the fray. She yanks her scarf up over her nose and mouth just as thick grey smoke boils up and fills the bar, only slightly muffling the cacophony of shrieks, growls, and curses that explode on all sides, punctuated with the mechanized shouts of the ‘troopers.

Jyn ignores the lot, diving through the mess towards the smallest table on the far side of the room. She’s almost to it when someone tall and lean tries to shove past her, stumbling as her shoulder jolts against his chest. Jyn whips around and grabs him, and has just enough time to catch his shaking hand and block the vibroblade he nearly jams into her neck.

“Hey, it’s me!” She shouts, pulling him close enough that he can hopefully see her clearly, forgetting for a moment that most of her face is covered. He stares at her with wide, slightly unfocused eyes, and she’s not sure if his sluggish reaction is due to her sudden appearance or to whatever is making him clutch his chest so tightly. The high whine of a blaster suddenly slices through the noise of the panicked bar, someone screams, and Jyn decides it’s not important. She plucks the blade from his hand, tightens her grip on his wrist, and drags him toward the door.

Half of the bar is doing the same, and Jyn allows them to be swept up and pushed along, although once they are through the door and out into the street, she jerks him hard to the side to get out of the flow of panicked bar patrons. He stumbles again at the pull, not nearly as graceful on his feet as she’s expecting, and Jyn glances back to see his eyes closed tight, his face strained even worse than before. A spike of cold fear goes through her chest suddenly, but she shoves her thoughts away and instead drops back to slip under his arm and brace him against her side.

His eyes snap open at the contact, and in the flaring neon city lights, she’s relieved to at least see that his pupils aren’t unevenly dilated or tracking separately. Whatever’s wrong with him, it’s probably not a head injury. He blinks hard, like he’s trying to clear his vision, and then in a quiet, ragged voice, “You?”

It shouldn’t hit her the way it does, but he loads so much pain and confusion into that one word that Jyn’s throat goes tight and her heart gives a painful thump inside her chest. She pauses, reaches up and tugs down her scarf from her face, and for the first time, Cassian’s eyes seem to sharpen and lock on to her. “Yeah,” she tries to sound nonchalant and winces when it comes out hoarse and a little wobbly instead. She swallows, tries again. “It’s me. Tanith,” she adds hastily, in case anyone’s listening. “Tanith Ponta. Remember?”

He doesn’t respond, simply looks at her like he’s looking at a map, searching for a route to stars-know-where. She opens her mouth to ask what she should call him, or maybe ask what’s wrong with him, but before she can find the words, someone jostles her elbow hard as they shove past her. Then someone else does the same, immediately after, and finally Jyn’s addled brain picks up on the fact that people are still running to get away from the bar, more than were even in the bar to begin with. She and Cassian are clearly not out of the deep cack just yet.

Behind them, she hears the sudden rumble of a ‘trooper carrier arriving at the bar they’ve just vacated. Well, that accounts for the thronging crowd, everyone dashing to get clear of the shitstorm that’s surely incoming. Jyn takes a hard left into the nearest public building to get off the streets before the Imps start clearing them by force. The interior is brightly lit and wide open, and Jyn frowns as she realizes she’s shoved them into a large holotheater. The ticket counter is some punk kid playing on her datapad, not even looking up when Jyn taps blindly at the auto-ticket kiosks as if she’s actually selecting a show. The kiosk beeps at her after a moment, annoyed by her random tapping, and she pretends to take something from the ticket slot. The performance is mostly for any potential security cameras, because the kid sure as hells never looks up.

Cassian stands silently at her side, his arm draped listlessly around her shoulders, just watching her with slightly glassy eyes. He looks a little drunk, which is perfect, because it accounts for his slight stagger as she pushes him to the ticket reader and then fishes her scrambler from her back pocket. It isn’t a very powerful device; she mostly only has it to confuse public transport kiosks and maybe rip off the occasional credit chip when she’s in a desperate need for funds. The palm-sized scrambler fools the theater ticket reader easily, though, and she drags Cassian into the darker areas of the theater, ducking into an auditorium where some dramatically-lit scene between two Humans is already in progress.

(“I don’t know _why_ you _bothered_ to come,” the pretty, blonde Human fem dressed like some kind of Core-world princess snarls bitterly in the holo. “I _told_ you I _never_ wanted to see you _again!_ ”

“I _had_ to, Marlene,” a brooding, dark-haired man answers in a low, growling voice, grabbing her arms and shaking her. “You _need_ me, and you _know_ it, _damn it_!”)

Jyn pulls Cassian into a far corner of the back row, and leans him against the wall. He slides away from her shoulders stiffly, his arm dropping too hard to smack against his leg as if he’s forgotten how to control it. Jyn frowns at him for a moment, then fumbles around in her own jacket lining until she finds the emergency bacta patch she has stashed there. She reaches out and tugs at Cassian’s hand, the one still clenched tightly at his side, but the contact seems to jolt him to life. He jerks away from her, his eyes narrowing and his shoulders pressed back against the wall like she’s threatening him with a weapon.

Jyn glares, and steps closer so he can hear as she drops her voice below the squabbling couple on the holo. “Let me see,” she insists, her hand hovering just over his.

He doesn’t move, simply stares back, his knuckles white on his jacket. The tight feeling is back in her throat, and Jyn finds that she has to force her words through it. “You really think I’m going to hurt you?”

(“You _never_ really _loved_ me anyway!” The blonde princess in the holo sobs. “I thought _you_ were _different_ , but it was all a _lie_ to get my fortune! But I never _asked_ to be in the Coruscanti elite! I just _wanted_ to have a _normal_ life!”)

Cassian takes a shaky, shallow breath. “I don’t know what you’re going to do.” He glances over her shoulder, still a little blurry but at least making an attempt to scan for anyone watching them, any threats, and then his eyes focus back on her. “I barely know you at all,” he says roughly, and despite herself Jyn flinches and looks away.

(In the center of the auditorium, the music from the holo blares suddenly into a throbbing, hard-edged club tune, as Princess weeps hysterically on the floor and the brooding man stomps into a strobing dance bar.)

Jyn scowls at the obnoxious holo and forces herself to turn back to Cassian. “Are you bleeding?” she asks, just loud enough to be heard over the music.

He shakes his head, but there’s a hesitant pause afterwards, and this time he’s the one who won’t meet her eyes. “Liar,” she snaps, and he snaps his head up, cold edged fury on his face.

“When I have to,” he replies in a tone that could freeze lava.

“When they _tell_ you to, even if it gets you bloody killed.” He doesn’t react, just glares at her icily, and Jyn wants to reach up and rip the contempt off his face – a face that is too thin and grey around the edges, his lips pressed together and his jaw a sharp, pained line. Karking hells, he’s a mess. The bacta patch crinkles in Jyn’s fist, and she forces herself to loosen her fingers.

“I have bacta,” she shoves the patch at his face before he can say anything else.

“I don’t need it,” he shrugs his left shoulder, but Jyn doesn’t miss the careful way he holds his right side completely still. “Save it for yourself.” He sneers. “You’re good at that.”

It’s a clumsy shot, but it hits all the same. “At least my life is worth something to _me_ ,” she hisses. “I’m not just throwing it away because some fucker _ordered_ me to.”

(The club music is slightly muffled now; Brooding Man has apparently found himself an eager club girl to drag into a room somewhere. Throaty, overdramatic moans punctuate the still-audible club beat.)

“No,” she just barely hears him growl over the noise. “You’d rather die alone in a gutter than risk your pride being hurt.”

Jyn’s blood is rushing through her veins, a hollow roar in her ears, and between that and the music, she has to step even closer to him so she can talk without shouting. She pretends not to notice how Cassian automatically dips his head close to hear her. “You willing to fail your mission just to spite me?”

She’s mildly proud of how her voice comes out; she sounds angry and clipped, a professional forced to work with someone distasteful. She doesn’t sound hurt. (She _doesn’t_. It’s just the holo behind her, turning from frenetic and angry to mournful as the scene shifts back to the heartbroken Princess lounging in her apartment and staring out a window at the rain. Her comm chimes, and then a mechanized male voice cuts through the melancholy music. Jyn startles and glances back over her shoulder, but it isn’t a ‘trooper, it’s just Brooding Man leaving a message on his lover’s comm, demanding that she pick up). 

When Jyn turns back to Cassian, his mouth has twisted into an expression she doesn’t have time to read before he deliberately relaxes his jaw and shrugs his body language into something that would almost be indifferent, if he weren’t clearly in so much pain. Jyn doesn’t care, though, because he finally drops his hand and lets her reach out and slip his jacket open.

His shirt is soaked with blood, and she notes with some exasperation (and fear) that Cassian looks just as surprised as she does.

(“Marlene,” Brooding Man growls, standing at a public comm console near a concert he’s clearly just been attending. “You _have_ to answer me _sooner_ or later, baby. You _can’t_ just shut me _out_ like this. Call me _back_.” Princess stares out her rainy window and eats something expensive-looking with a wistful expression.)

Jyn tears at the fabric of his shirt to get at Cassian’s ribs, and finally finds the long bloody knife wound across his upper right side. It looks shallow, thankfully, but it’s jagged around the edges and bleeding heavily, and worse, the skin around it has turned an unhealthy yellow. He’s been running around with this injury, leaving it untended for far too long. She rips the bacta patch open, but it isn’t big enough to cover the whole damn cut. So Jyn covers the worst of the wound and then claws at her scarf, tearing it from her neck and shaking it out.

Someone walks into the theater behind her, and Jyn starts to turn to square off when Cassian throws his good arm around her and hauls her up against him. She can feel him flinch when she presses against his injured side, and she tries to reach around his torso to brace her weight on the walls behind him instead. Cassian drops his head and presses his face into her neck, and Jyn reflexively swallows but fights back her instinctive reaction. Instead, she tilts her face up to brush her mouth against his throat. His pulse races against her lips, his skin faintly clammy and far too cold for her liking, but she presses a little closer anyway, playing along with his act and letting his head obscure her face from the person walking in.

“Whoops, ’scuse me,” someone says with mild embarrassment just out of Jyn’s line of sight, and shuffles further into the theater. Cassian immediately lifts his head, and she knows he’s peering over her shoulder, watching the stranger leave. She takes advantage of the moment to slide her arms under his jacket and torn shirt, weaving the scarf around his ribs. He stays utterly still in her arms, the sound of his erratic breathing scraping at Jyn’s nerves as she struggles to keep her hands steady.

(“Marlene, this is _ridiculous_ ,” Brooding Man says loudly to Princess’s message machine, his back turned to a bunch of other men playing sabaac and drinking loudly, calling for him to return to the game. “You still _love_ me, and _I_ still love _you_. We _can’t_ keep _doing_ this to each other. _Call_ me.” Princess leans against her lonely window and sighs, her eyes wet and far away.)

Cassian is still holding her, his head hanging over her shoulder like it’s just too heavy to lift, his breath rasping against the exposed skin of her neck. Jyn leans up, carefully keeping her weight off his side, and whispers in his ear, “Breathe in, and brace.” She waits a moment until he nods slightly, and then feels his ribs expand under her hands. Quickly, she tightens the scarf down, ignores the soft, pained groan almost directly in her ear, and ties it off against the knife wound. The pressure should stop the bleeding where the bacta can’t reach. Hopefully.

Her skin feels too tight, too hot, and definitely too sensitive right now. Her kyber crystal presses into the hollow of her throat, the sharp edges like small blades against her pulse. It’s all too much, she thinks, too sudden, too intense, too overwhelming. She has to get this over with; they have to get the hells out of here.

(“I _need_ you, Marlene,” Brooding Man growls into the message machine over the rumbling of engines in a speeder repair shop, a comm held to his ear as he digs his hands into some fancy speeder with the manufacturer’s logo prominently displayed. “You _can’t_ leave me _alone_ like this, baby. Call me _back_ , okay? _Please_ just _call_ me _back_.” Princess gasps, her hands to her heart, and weeps again as the rain drips against her window.)

Jyn’s fingers are slick with Cassian’s blood, and she feels a little sick. She can’t walk around with bloody hands without drawing attention, though, so she feels around until she finds a dry patch of his shirt and scrubs her hands as best she can against it. Cassian nods in agreement, a movement she feels against her cheek more than she sees. She still trying to scrub the blood from under her fingernails when he says quietly into her ear, “I looked for you.”

Jyn stills, and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment before ruthlessly digging at her bloody nails again.

“On Scipio. For hours,” he goes on, and part of Jyn wants to stalk away and leave him again, right now, before he can say anything else. It wouldn’t even be that wrong of her; the ‘troopers are distracted elsewhere, the bleeding’s stopped, and his heart rate will steady out any minute now. He’ll be fine without her. He’s always been fine without her. “The gang was gone too,” Cassian’s mouth is just a few centimeters from her cheek, his breath ghosting along her jaw and down her neck. “I thought they’d come in and grabbed you. I thought, thought they might have you somewhere, hurting you,” his voice cracks slightly and he shakes his head, and Jyn bites her lip so hard she can taste copper on her tongue. “I _looked_ ,” he says again, and the weariness in his voice makes Jyn’s shoulders tighten, her throat close off entirely.

(“It was _only_ about the _money_ at _first_ , baby!” Brooding Man tells the message machine over the muted music of yet another dance club. “But I fell in _love_ with you for _real_ , Marlene. You _have_ to _believe_ me. Stop _hiding_ from this. I _know_ you love _me_ too. Call me _back_.” Clouds of steam billow up around Princess’s naked body as she stands in her huge glass shower, her nipples and cunt tastefully obscured by ripples in the glass but everything else on display, as she weeps prettily into the spray.)

Against her, Cassian’s body is tense and shaking slightly, his skin still too cold under her palms. His hands are both on her back now, fingers digging into her jacket, although whether that’s to hold her in place or keep himself upright, she’s not entirely sure. “Eventually Kay sliced the security cams on the bank.” Now his voice is laced with bitterness, and Jyn tries not to flinch. “The one next to the restaurant. I saw you attack the gang. I saw you ordering them around.” He stops, and makes a low, guttural noise that she dimly recognizes as a cynical parody of a chuckle. “Nicely done, _Kestrel_. I don’t know why you even bothered to call me in the first place.”

The fire surges back up into Jyn’s veins at his derisive tone. Her lip curls, and she turns her head and snarls back, “I didn’t know you were going to try and make me your _pet._ ”

(“ _Sweetie_ , just because _I_ never found a _man_ as _good_ as your Carlos,” a flamboyant male on the screen snaps sassily at Princess, “ _doesn’t_ mean I don’t want _you_ to be _happy,_ at least. You _don’t_ have to _marry_ that _boring_ bastard.” The music swells into a melancholy crescendo as Princess cries passionately, “But it’s my _dream_ to be _married_ on my papa’s _birthday_ , and Carlos is _gone_ , he _left_ me _forever!_ ”)

Cassian’s fingers dig almost painfully tight into her back now, and she can’t see his face but she can feel his jaw flex against her cheek. “My pet?” His heart rate is more regular now than it was a few minutes ago, Jyn notes distantly. His voice sounds stronger too, probably the painkillers in the bacta kicking in at last and granting him a mild adrenaline surge. He mutters something dark in a language that Jyn uncertainly identifies as Alderaanian, draws in an uneven breath, and continues in a distinctly incredulous tone. “Why the hells would you think I wanted you to be my _pet?_ ”

“You wanted me in your debt,” she reminds him harshly. “Just a _favor,_ right? You didn’t even try to bargain with me, just brushed me off. I was just some lost child to you, wasn’t I? So you buy me food and tell me - you told me not to _worry_ , just, just that I’ll _owe_ you,” she’s stumbling over the words, the old anger and humiliation rising to tangle with her already chaotic feelings as she clings to Cassian’s bloody, cold body in the dark.

For a long moment, neither of them move.

(On the screen, Princess prepares for her elaborate wedding, while Brooding Man gets in another quick sex scene at a club and then stalks the extremely unrealistically empty streets at night without a single mugger attacking him.)

“I didn’t want your…I wasn’t trying to shackle you.” Cassian mutters, his beard scraping against her cheek as he speaks. The words are stilted and clumsy, like he’s not sure what he’s trying to say. “I knew you could take care of yourself.”

Jyn huffs her own derisive laugh. “How?” She turns her face from the holo and squeezes her eyes shut again. “You barely know me at all,” she says in a small, tight voice.

He slumps a little more, and his forehead drops to her shoulder. Jyn winds her fingers into the rags of his shirt and waits.

 “I don’t,” he says at last, and if he was tired before, he is _exhausted_ now. “I thought I did, but I was wrong.” Again, he makes the rasping sound masquerading as a laugh. “I was an idiot to worry about you.”

 “Yes,” Jyn says softly in the quiet dark space that’s formed between them. “You were.” And then, because it’s dark and her hands still feel grimy with his blood against his too-cool skin, she presses her lips to his throat and whispers, “But thank you for doing it anyway.”

(“Marlene!” Brooding Man shouts, bursting into the ornate chapel just as the Imperial clerk is about to sign and seal her marriage certificate. “You _can’t_ do this! You don’t _love_ him!” The music swells into a dramatic crest, but it washes over Jyn like the tide over the black rocks of the Lah’mu shore, distant and cold, and the only thing that feels real is the rise and fall of Cassian’s chest against her.)

“I just…wanted you to be safe,” Cassian breathes the confession into the quiet space between them, and Jyn curls herself around it like it’s something she can keep.

(On the screen, Princess flings herself into Brooding Man’s arms as the crowd around them erupts with cheers and the music turns cheerful and bright. “Love prevails!” The flamboyant man shouts over the passionately kissing couple. Jyn closes her eyes and huddles against Cassian’s bloody chest and imagines, just for a moment, that life could really be that simple.)

 “Dying as someone’s cannon fodder isn’t better,” Jyn says at last, softly but firmly, “than dying in a gutter. It’s still dying.”

“There has to be more to life,” he replies in the same tone, “than just surviving.”

(The music soars as the happy holo couple fades out of sight, and the audience laughs and applauds around Jyn and Cassian, a thousand light years away from their silence.)

Cassian’s heart is steady, and his skin is warming slowly under her touch, but his voice sounds strained again as he turns his head and whispers against her ear. “If I asked, would you come with me?”

Jyn swallows, mirrors his movement until she can feel the ghost of his mouth against the corner of her own. She can feel his beard scraping her lips as she whispers back, “If I did, would you stay?”

One of his hands unclenches from her jacket, and he slides his palm up her spine to rest lightly against the back of her head. She can feel the fine tremor run through him, a brief shudder before he takes a deep breath and stills. He opens his mouth to speak, and if Jyn were to turn her head a fraction further her lips would be pressed against his –

“I really love that ending,” a loud voice says nearby. “ _So_ romantic.”

Cassian jerks, startled, and Jyn lifts her head and glares into the suddenly bright theater. The holo is over, the lights flicking back on as the audience shuffles towards the exit. “It’s a cliché,” someone else replies as the speakers walk just behind Jyn’s back.

“It’s a classic,” the first person replies. “Oh, excuse me,” the stranger says in a teasing tone as their shoulder clips Jyn’s in passing, “Really you two, show’s over. Time to go home, eh?”

“Of course, sorry about that, sir,” Cassian says over Jyn’s head in a casual tone that splashes over her like a bucket of cold water. “Have a nice night.”

“You too, son,” the stranger calls cheerily as he bustles out the door with his friend. Well, Jyn thinks a bit grouchily, pulling away from Cassian and stubbornly refusing to look at up his face. At least he looks healthy enough not to send strangers calling for help. She scans down his jacket and then her own clothes and hands, discreetly checking for any bloodstains. Her nails are still red around the edges, but in the dark outside, that will just look like dirt.

“Come on, Tanith,” Cassian says over her head. He zips his jacket up tightly to hide his shirt and pushes himself off the wall. The abrupt transition to his feet makes him stagger slightly, and Jyn slides back under his arm immediately.

“Do you know where we’re going?” She asks as they shuffle out at the tail end of the crowd, hopefully looking like just another couple leaving a shmaltzy holo on a date.

“Ah,” Cassian clears his throat and curls his hand around her shoulder, his other hand jammed deep into his pocket as he glances to the right, scanning the theater lobby as they pass through. “No.”

Jyn smirks a little, and keeps her focus to the left, watching for threats. “You don’t have a…fallback?”

“I did,” he mutters as they leave the theater and quickly turn down the street away from the flashing Imperial barricades that are set up around the bar down the street. “Missed it.”

She can feel him tense against her side, clearly waiting for her to ask for details, to demand to know what happened to leave him wounded and hunted with no emergency exit. She tightens her arm around his waist and says instead, “Then I’ve got something that might help.”

She pulls out the datachip that Henna had been twirling in the bar, roughly an hour (or a lifetime) ago. Jyn grins a little as she contemplates using an Imperial snitch’s escape plan to help a rebel spy evade capture. “Looks like…a public transit to Corellia,” she reads off the label on the ticket. “Leaves every three hours. Next one’s in half an hour, from the port just around the corner.” Jyn tilts her head back and finally allows herself to look at Cassian’s face. “Will that work for you?”

He looks better, less grey and wan, but still so tired that it makes Jyn’s chest ache. “Yes,” he replies without looking at her, eyes still roaming across the streets and his long hair swinging down across his cheeks in the light evening breeze. Her fingers itch to reach up and tuck it back, but she curls her fist into her pocket and tells herself to stop being so fucking sentimental.

“Then let’s go,” she says shortly, tucking the datachip into his jacket pocket and leading him resolutely towards the port.

Cassian walks stiffly but quickly enough at her side that it’s probably not noticeable to anyone watching. They move in silence for a few minutes, and then his fingers fist into her jacket at the shoulder and he asks in a carefully controlled voice, “Is the ticket only for one?”

Jyn considers her response for a long moment. “Yeah,” she replies at last as the gate to the port comes into view. “But - ”

She’s an idiot. She’s a _crazy_ idiot. She’s a crazy karking idiot who has been down this hyperlane before and knows exactly where it ends.

“But maybe I can get another one,” she says slowly.

“If you wanted,” he replies. The gate is open, but two ‘troopers are stationed inside the guard house next to it. Jyn holds her breath and refuses to peer in at them as she and Cassian walk through the gate in silence. One of the ‘troopers turns his head to glance at them as they go by, but neither makes the slightest effort to impede their progress. A few more steps, and they’re in the port, making their way down a long row between launch pads. Against her side, Cassian lets out a heavy breath, and silently Jyn agrees with the sentiment.

She takes him to the right console, just outside a waiting Zentine ministry-class shuttle. It looks packed already, thirty-odd sentients crammed into the seats and fidgeting as they wait for the launch time. Jyn frowns at the sight, and feels Cassian’s arm squeezing around her shoulders for a moment before he carefully pulls away. “Only if you want, Tanith,” he says quietly, and then steps towards the conductor, holding out the datachip with the bland, polite smile of a commuter at the end of a long day of work. The conductor scans the chip and nods absently as his datapad beeps, and then Cassian steps to the side and glances back at her.

Jyn swallows, then walks slowly up to the conductor. “Is there,” she starts, swallows (crazy, this is crazy, but… _I just wanted you to be safe_ ), “If I needed a ticket,” she asks a little unsteadily, “where would I get one?”

The conductor barely glances up. “Sorry, miss,” he says in a bored tone, and Jyn’s stomach twists at the dismissal in his voice. “Sold out until tomorrow. Busy night, I guess.”

Over his shoulder, Cassian is leaning against the shuttle door, his head turned to look back at her. His eyes meet hers, and then he slowly steps away from the door. “Perhaps I can…extend my trip,” he says in a voice just a touch too tense to be completely casual.

“No,” Jyn cuts him off, striding over to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. She doesn’t care if people are watching, she doesn’t care if this looks just as melodramatic and ridiculous as Princess and her Brooding Man. She _does_ care that Cassian is being hunted by Imperials, that he has severe blood loss and a wound that’s only barely patched on his side, that if he hangs around tonight there might not be a tomorrow for him at all. “You have to get back,” she says firmly, and before he can answer she pushes up on her toes and kisses him square on the mouth, hard and warm and for just a moment, _safe_. “You have to go,” she whispers fiercely against his lips.

She breaks the kiss as abruptly as she started it, drops back to her heels and steps back. Cassian's hands tighten on her shoulders to prevent her from moving away and he bends his head to press his forehead to hers. “Give me something,” he breathes, “some way to contact you. I just need,” he swallows, shakes his head slightly. “I just need to know that you’re alive. That you’re still out there.”

Jyn bites her lip, then whispers back, “Skyler Enz. Owns a mech shop on Nar Shadda. Leave a message for Brynna, I’ll get it. Leave me a dead drop or a net-mail address, or something.” Jyn pulls her head back and waits until he looks up and meets her gaze. The multi-colored lights of the city port reflect in his dark eyes, and Jyn thinks inanely of shooting stars and nebulas. “I’ll keep in touch,” she promises, “if you will.”

“Departure in 3 minutes,” the conductor calls out from a few meters away. “All passengers board at this time.”

Cassian's hands slide off her shoulders and down her arms as she pulls away for the last time, and he looks like he means to reach out for her again but thinks better of it. Then, to her surprise, he holds up his hand, palm up in the traditional smuggler's bargaining gesture. “Deal,” he says, his eyes intent on her face.

Jyn’s mouth curves into a half smile, and she presses her palm against his. “Deal,” she replies firmly.

“All passengers please board at this time,” the conductor calls pointedly, and Cassian moves back towards the open hatch, still looking at her.

“Good luck,” she says, because she can’t think of anything better.

“Be safe, Jyn,” Cassian replies quietly, and then he’s turning away, he’s on the shuttle, and the door closes behind him with a hiss.

Jyn turns and walks back out into the night, and the hum of the shuttle engine is quickly lost in the drone of a hundred other spacecraft launching and landing all around her. She keeps her blood-crusted nails in her pockets and her head down as she strides quickly through the streets, and calculates how long it will take her to get to Nar Shadda. She was tired of this planet, anyway.

It’s a chilly night on Haidoral Prime, and she doesn’t even have a scarf anymore. But Jyn remembers the brush of Cassian’s mouth against her neck, and she doesn’t feel cold at all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Haidoral Prime's capital city](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Haidoral_Prime) is, in fact, simply called "Haidoral Administrative Center One." Honestly, how boring do you have to be...?
> 
>  _“tvoya mat' soset pal'tsy nog!”_ = “Your mother sucks toes!” (What? Not every insult translates well, okay?)
> 
> I had to watch a terrible, self-professed "rom-com" the other day, packed full of just about every sexist, classist, homophobic, _mindless_ cliche in the business. The holo that interrupts/underscores Cassian and Jyn's conversation is more or less a grumpy rant about all of it.


	5. INTERLUDE - in the chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’ll be here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor style shift, because they barely know each other at all (but they want to).

I told her I was lost in this world,

and she smiled

because she was too.

We were all lost somehow,

but we didn't care.

We had,

in the chaos,

found each other.

\- atticus

 

\--

 

[A note written in neat Basic on the back of an old receipt for a machine shop on Nar Shadda]

Brynna –

If you are still interested in our bargain, contact @carlos_n_marlene on Quantagram. Message me, we’ll set up a more formal account. Hope you are well, looking forward to working with you.

\- the rhythm box

 

\--

[IMPSERV_ NARSHADDA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3273LY6793]

 

Welcome to QuantaGram, where the star is YOU! Please log in or sign up for your own personal account, and let the galaxy see you shine!

[Username: justbusiness3254]

[Password: **************]

Log in success! Welcome back, YOUR NAME HERE!

You have 0 posts. Post a holosnap here!

You have 0 friends. Send a friend request here!

You have 7 new friend requests. Make a friend here!

 

Add to your entourage, YOUR NAME HERE! Search for another user by name: carlos_n_marlene

 

Send **carlos_n_marlene** a holomessage! Or if you haven’t touched up your makeup yet,  send a text!

 

 **justbusiness3254** : got your message. keeping my end of the deal. doing ok. new job set up. have a different message account? this user interface is terrible. bad security too. easy to slice.

 **carlos_n_marlene** : Thank you for checking in. Yes, will set up a few net-mail accounts, standby for list (primary and backup) when I have a secure connection. Why does your profile say your name is restricted and I need admin privileges to see it?

 **justbusiness3254** : bc i’m that fucking good

 **carlos_n_marlene** : Good to know.

 **carlos_n_marlene** : A list of new net-mail accounts should be in your private message box. Please delete after reading. I will delete this account as soon as you acknowledge.

 **justbusiness3254** : got list. deleted, killing this account after sign off. not amatur.

 **carlos_n_marlene** : Of course.

 **justbusiness3254** : why is your username carlos an marlene?

 **carlos_n_marlene** : Characters in a vid I enjoyed.

 **justbusiness3254** : it was terrible. they were terrible.

 **carlos_n_marlene** : I have fond memories of watching it, all the same.

 **justbusiness3254** : ok maybe but still. terrible.

 

\--

[IMPSERV_ NARSHADDA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3273LY9804]

 

To: Passik

From: Niymar

Subj: alive

checking in. still at place where you left note. doing ok. got job with some people that will pay out, keep me going. good hazard pay. might piss off some people we both hate too. if i hear anything interesting while i’m in there i’ll let you know.

 

\--

 

To: Niymar

From: Passik

Subj: RE: alive

Good, I’m glad to hear you are settling in. I hope these people you’re working for value your skills and your safety. I appreciate your kind gesture, but please don’t take any unnecessary risks for my sake. I look forward to hearing from you soon, but if I do not respond right away, it may be due to a business trip of my own, where I will have very little time and possibly a bad holonet connection. I will drop you a note as soon as possible, if that is the case.

Good luck.

 

\--

 

To: Passik

From: Niymar

Subj: RE: alive

job was fine I’m safe. hope your business trip went ok too. thinking of leaving the old job and traveling again. tired of some of the people around here, think they are tired of me too. everyone keeps singing that stupid song about fossil fuels. very annoying. who uses fossil fuel? singer is shite too, way too high pitch and squeaky. everybody here loves it tho, can’t get away. so will prob be in new place when you answer.

answer soon

 

\--

 

To: Niymar

From: Passik

Subj: RE: alive

Sorry it took so long to respond. It was a longer business trip than I expected, and much less fun than I hoped. Relieved to hear you’re doing well, though. Hope your move went well and you are happy in your new place. I think I know the song you’re talking about. It’s pretty pervasive where I am, too. I don’t much care for the style, either, although I believe gasoline as a metaphor for romance is an old tradition on certain Inner Rim planets that once used it as a flammable fuel. Out of curiosity, is there a type of music you like?

 

\--

[IMPSERV_ NAKADIA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3273LY1742]

 

To: Orvo

From: Grilt

Subj: safe

made it to new place. rough move, am ok. got steady work, eating every night now so its already better. also good that you are ok. I hear your business sucks lately but have a couple friends out in outer rim that might be interested in your product. could pass you their contact info. don’t be too friendly with them because they are not nice, but they have some stuff that might help your company and they hate your business rivals. want?

I like music without words mostly, i guess because the words are stupid sometimes but the music is usually good. and I can decide what it means, no kriffing idiot telling me what he thinks about love or money or ass. bouncy music is ok when in a good mood or fighting. but i like some of the fancy crap too, with instruments. there’s one lady called lindah stirving, kind of like her stuff. helps me sleep because I suck at that sometimes. you?

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: safe

We had some deals go sour on us, but my boss has confidence it will work out in the end. Send the business contact info for your friends to our secondary messaging account, I’ll take a look. I won’t make any premature calls, but another branch of my company might be interested.

I don’t listen to much music, personally. No real time, and different things are always popular wherever I go, so I’m hopelessly out of date no matter what. I haven’t heard of Lindah Stirving, but on occasion I do like some quieter music. Someone once recommended I try music for more restful sleep, but I found I couldn’t sleep at all with the noise. I think music makes me think too much, and I needed it to do the opposite. Maybe someday I’ll figure out something that works.

Eating every day is generally a good thing, I think. Found a particular dish you like to make?

\--

 

To: Orvo

From: Grilt

Subj: RE: safe

don’t cook just get things from places. why?

sent contact to backup, added some security. your tall friend should be able to handle it.

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: safe

I apologize if my curiosity was invasive. I personally like to cook. I understand if you don’t want to answer. After all, you hardly know me.

I hope you will continue to let me know that you are doing well, if nothing else.

Thank you for the information, I received the messages and my friend appreciated the challenge you presented.

 

\--

 

To: Orvo

From: Grilt

Subj: ok

not mad. don’t be such a stuffy arse. what do you cook?

tell your friend I bet I can find something he can’t figure out, and my comment from when we met still stands.

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: ok

Being stuffy has its advantages, you should try it sometime. I rarely have the time or the ingredients to cook anything that I want, but I like to use a lot of spices in my food. Beats the bland stuff I usually get when travelling. If you like, I can send you a recipe on the backup account. My tall friend has volunteered to package it for you, to return the favor of the puzzle you sent him. I also believe he plans to add a comeback for that comment of yours when you first met. I should warn you: he’s had a long time to think about his response. It could be devastating.

 

\--

 

To: Orvo

From: Grilt

Subj: RE: ok

‘spices’ pretty vague. lots of spices in the galaxy. I assume you don’t mean the kind that make you see pretty sparkles and think you can fly. unless you do? maybe you’re not as stuffy after all.

going to be working for a bit, maybe won’t answer right away. will let you know when done and ok.

tell him bring it on. send the recipe.

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: ok

My food is sparkles-free, thanks. Never question the stuffiness. Recipe is away on backup account. Our friend bundled it pretty nicely, he says he hopes you enjoy the puzzle. Or at least he should say that, but he is occasionally very stubborn and a little rude. Probably my fault; I have not tried very hard to correct his manners. Some people think I should, but he is smart enough to make his own decisions in that regard, and I don’t believe in telling people what to do in their personal life. I do wish, sometimes, that he were a little more delicate, at least to my boss. Would save me a headache or two.

Good luck on your work, please let me know as soon as you can how you are doing, and whether or not you liked the recipe.

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: Checking in

Hello, it’s been awhile, just thought I would check back and make sure you finished up with your work. Ever get that recipe? My friend wants to know how long it took you to solve the encryption. His estimate is at 2 hours. Did you get the chance to try the recipe?

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: Checking in

It’s been a couple months now, so I would just like to check and see if you are alright. Please let me know on any of the accounts. Standing by.

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: RE: Checking in

Are you alright?

 

\--

 

To: Grilt

From: Orvo

Subj: [no subject]

Are you there?

 

\--

[IMPSERV_TATOOINE_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3274LY3006]

 

Welcome to ♦Shimmer♦, USERNAME! [@753467893]

See [23] new sparkles!

Fill out your profile! Tell us what you’re all about!

Recommended for you: @ShimmerStaff, @ImperialNewsNetwork, @SandBoss

Trending: #favesandwich, #MoffQuarshPanaka, #humansfirst #PartisanTerror, #rebelscum

 

So What’s Happening?

 

**@753467893:**

[ _@TippingPoint_  : just got back from holiday, sorry didn’t say hello, looks like old account erased tho? _#gotyourrecipe #chilaquilas_ ]

 

**@TippingPoint:**

[ _@753467893:_ the old account was inactive too long, had to delete, meet me on private chat? _#nosparklesinfood_ ]

 

[Invitation sent to **@753467893** for private chat room]

[Accepted! User logging in…]

 

 _753467893_ : ?

 _TippingPoint_ : are you alright?

 _753467893_ : yes

 _753467893_ : rough trip. thnks for recipe

 _TippingPoint_ : standby please

 _753467893_ : ??

 

[run://paaerduag_security_start]

[running…]

[running…]

[PAAERDUAG PROTOCOL INITIATED]

 

 _753467893_ : wtf was that?

 _TippingPoint_ : Security program. Makes it very difficult for anyone to watch our conversation or trace either of our accounts back to point of origin.

 _753467893_ : holy banthashit thats really good code.

 _TippingPoint_ : Are you hurt?

 _753467893_ : fine. this code piggybacks the signals? nice

 _TippingPoint:_ I don’t use it often. Repeated exposure to rivals might allow them a chance to crack it.

 _753467893_ : that would be bad for business. prob get you demoted

 _TippingPoint:_ Possibly.

 _753467893:_ have to go back to flirting with cooks for food

 _TippingPoint:_ What makes you think I ever stopped?

 _753467893:_ wait is this ok then? with your code?

 _TippingPoint:_ I can’t make a habit of it, but if you don’t snitch on me to my boss it will be fine.

 _753467893:_ sneaky

 _TippingPoint_ : concerned

 _753467893_ : sorry

 _TippingPoint_ : Is there somewhere I can send you a list of new accounts?

 _753467893:_ if you want to keep talking, sure

 _TippingPoint_ : Do you want to keep our bargain?

 _753467893_ : yes

 _753467893:_ here

 _753467893:_ list of contacts for me

 _753467893:_ [open attached file]

 _TippingPoint_ : Thank you. Will send my own list in a minute.

 _TippingPoint_ : This line is very secure, and the program will erase all logs after we sign off. Can you tell me where you were?

 _753467893_ : somewhere w/no holonet. job was shite after all

 _TippingPoint:_ I would really like to know, if you can tell me.

 _753467893:_ matters?

 _TippingPoint:_ You went silent for 4 months.

 _753467893_ : it took me while to get out

 _TippingPoint_ : Alright. I’ll drop it.

 _753467893:_ sure chat is secure?

 _TippingPoint:_ Yes.

 _753467893_ : bakura imp prison

 _753467893_ : you still there?

 _TippingPoint_ : Are you safe?

 _753467893:_ yes fine, got away with all my pieces

 _753467893:_ promise

 _753467893:_ did ok inside too. i look small but hit hard

 _753467893:_ hello?

 _753467893:_ you ok?

 _TippingPoint_ : Yes, I’m fine. I’m glad you’re out, and safe.

 _753467893:_ tell k it was 1 hour

 _TippingPoint:_ What?

 _753467893:_ cracked his puzzle. 1 hour. tell him his calculation algorithms are still crud

 _TippingPoint:_ I’ll pass along the message.

 _753467893:_ *all* of the message?

 _TippingPoint:_ Guess.

 _753467893:_ scaredy lothcat

 _TippingPoint:_ Have you ever spent seven hours trapped in a shuttle listening to the expanded theory of statistical probability as it relates to tactical analysis?

 _753467893:_ point taken

 _753467893_ : this paauerdaug thing is kriffing amazing code. can’t slice it with the junk i have. k make this? (if yes don’t tell him i liked it)

 _TippingPoint:_ No, it’s not K’s. Although he will be extremely flattered you thought of him when I mention it to him.

 _753467893:_ e tu cha. you code it?

 _TippingPoint_ : No, although I am also flattered.

 _753467893:_ not stroking your ego

 _TippingPoint:_ Of course not.

 _753467893:_ will only do that when i want something.

 _753467893:_ like this: you are very clever and amazing

 _TippingPoint:_ I accept your transparent attempt to sweet-talk me. What do you want?

 _753467893:_ another recipe

 _TippingPoint:_ You liked the chilaquiles?

 _753467893:_ made them a little wrong, didn’t have the right stuff, but they were still pretty good

 _753467893:_ were ok at least

 _753467893:_ had worse

 _TippingPoint:_ Truly your talent for flattery knows no bounds.

 _753467893:_ best thing ever. clever and amazing. send more

 _TippingPoint_ : I’ll have K package another recipe.

 _TippingPoint:_ Did you get my contact list?

 _753467893_ : yes

 _753467893_ : will write soon ok?

 _TippingPoint:_ Please do.

 _753467893_ : will delete this account after this too

 _TippingPoint:_ Good idea. I will drop this one, but I’ll send you another as an emergency contact later.

 _753467893:_ lots of backups

 _TippingPoint_ : Do you blame me?

 _753467893:_ no

 _753467893_ : thanks

 _753467893:_ for worrying

 _TippingPoint_ : I always do.

 

[run://paaerduag_security_end]

[IMPSERV_TATOOINE_PUBLIC ACCESS: Command: Delete LOG #3274LY3006: Authorization PAAERDUAG]

[IMPSERV_TATOOINE_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3274LY3006 This Record Does Not Exist]

 

\--

[IMPSERV_RISHI_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3275LY6754]

 

To: Dane

From: Persha

Subj: good food

made that new recipe. mostly. what are blue festan peppers? sounds fancy. the saffron spice was nice tho, and made good paint. doing ok? heard there was a mess in the chommel system. (don’t fuss, have good security on this line. not your special code but still really kriffing good)

 

\--

 

To: Persha

From: Dane

Subj: paint

That is some impressive encryption. If you would be willing to share, our tall friend would really like to try and examine it from the source code. If you heard about the mess in the Chommell system, then you know that my last job didn’t work out for me so well, and he thinks your code will help prevent a repeat. Your call, no pressure. Blue festan peppers are also sometimes called ‘frill peppers’ or ‘plave sake’ in Bocce, and they aren’t particularly fancy. I guess it just depends on where you are when you’re looking for them. They are very common in the Atrivis sector. I do have to ask, though, how you made paint from saffron? And more importantly, _why_ did you make paint from saffron? I’m fairly certain that wasn’t in the recipe.

 

\--

 

To: Dane

From: Persha

Subj: RE: paint

will have to keep looking for those peppers. saffron is cheap, mix with tallow or clear oil. good paint, but can be washed off skin easy so no evidence. needed paint to express an opinion. stupid imperial poster in the public transport area, very white and clean. added a few missing pieces of anatomy, in case anyone thought human bodies really looked like that. education is important.

what went wrong on your job last time? no pressure to answer.

 

\--

 

To: Persha

From: Dane

Subj: RE: paint

You are a true public servant. I’m sorry I missed your educational contribution to interspecies relations. I imagine it was both informative and fragrant. Have you ever read “Iconography in the Age of Xim” by Arhol Hextraphon? A bit boring in the beginning, but he had a whole section on subversive cultural displays. He said that even thousands of years ago, people expressed their opinions on politics in very similar ways via graffiti and other spur-of-the-moment art. In fact, I think basic anatomy is high on the list of classic artistic commentary.

I guess it’s fair to ask what happened. One of my contacts was compromised on the holo, and all his net-mails tracked. Turns out he was talking with Undesirables, and the Empire can't have that, you know how it is. I didn’t catch it, and it ended badly, would have been much worse if my tall friend hadn’t showed up and saved the contract. I was on desk duty for a few weeks, and my friend did not appreciate it. I didn’t enjoy it much either. I did actually mean it when I said you did not have to give me anything. You just have the best code I’ve seen. I could send you some compensation for it if you wanted to set up a temp account.

 

\--

 

To: Dane

From: Persha

Subj: puzzle

knew it was a classic, did not need a book. will maybe read anyway, in case there are any good ideas in there.

attached a puzzle for your friend. if he can crack it, has my code and some random crud I had lying around just to keep Tall Dark And Annoying happy. So he doesn’t rant about statistics or whatever for hours at you. youre welcome and you owe me.

 

\--

 

[IMPSERV_FELUCIA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3275LY5559]

Hey there, _knivesofmarch_ , welcome back to What’sHap!

 

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : got your package

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ thank you

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : K also found the restraining bolt overrides

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ don’t know how to thank you for that

 _knivesofmarch_ : no prob

 _knivesofmarch:_ did K install them?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : yes and spent 3 days talking about it

 _knivesofmarch_ : this line secure?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : check the code

 _knivesofmarch_ : shite youre using mine

 _knivesofmarch:_ ok guess we are good

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : good

 _knivesofmarch:_  you ok?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : why do you ask?

 _knivesofmarch_ : you usually write fancy

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : sorry. tired. bad day.

 _knivesofmarch_ : can leave you alone then

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : no it’s fine. just been working late a lot. had a few rough meetings.

 _knivesofmarch:_ sounds like fun

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : we have very different ideas of fun, in that case.

 _knivesofmarch:_ so I finally read that book. the one about people drawing dicks on walls to protest. you were right, start was boring

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : the author did tend to ramble.

 _knivesofmarch_ : really liked the pictures though

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : I don’t think my edition had pictures.

 _knivesofmarch_ : then you got a bad edition

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : clearly

 _knivesofmarch_ : did learn a few things after all. ancients had a thing about shyracks flying out of someone’s arse? graffiti everywhere, jokes, stories. hilarious

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : I’d forgotten that part.

 _knivesofmarch:_ prob because yours didn’t have helpful pictures

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : No, it did not. Now I feel vaguely robbed.

 _knivesofmarch_ : want me to send you some?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ No, thank you.

 _knivesofmarch_ : will cure what ails you

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ I’m not sure that anal bats is a cure for anything, let alone what ails me.

 _knivesofmarch_ : you checked?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ I admit, I have not.

 _knivesofmarch_ : then how would you know?

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji_ : Good point. Still no.

 _knivesofmarch:_ got some copies around here somewhere

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.

 _knivesofmarch_ : my favorite had like 20 shyracks. crazy storage space in that guy

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ That does sound fascinating.

 _knivesofmarch_ : sure you don’t want me to send it? could be good for you

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ You are too kind.

 _knivesofmarch_ : I know. Too bad. your loss

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ I think I can survive.

 _tinkertailorsoldierpraji:_ Thank you.

 _knivesofmarch_ : anytime

 

\--

[IMPSERV_MIRIAL_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3275LY2222]

 

[run://stardust_security_start]

[running…]

[running…]

[ENCRYPTION COMPLETE]

[PRIVATE NETWORK SET UP COMPLETE]

[1 USER in the network]

 

To: C

From: J

Subj: trust

worked out new code. look. creates private network with no external access unless you have passkey. so here. can talk a little easier here if you want.

 

\--

 

[run://stardust_security_start]

[running…]

[running…]

[ENCRYPTION COMPLETE]

[PRIVATE NETWORK SET UP COMPLETE]

[2 USERS in the network]

 

To: J

From: C

Subj: RE: trust

Very clever coding. K thinks it’s strange that we talk this much. I don’t. Do you?

 

\--

 

To: C

From: J

Subj: trust

No.

 

\--

 

[IMPSERV_RYLOTH_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3275LY7823]

 

To: J

From: C

Subj: RE: documentary

I watched that holo. I did not necessarily agree with all of the director’s opinions, but I did find the part where they toured the Imperial droid facility to be fascinating. Amazing the things that documentary crews can get away with filming. Thank you for the recommendation. K also asked if you were safe after that last job. Actually, his exact words were “has she placed herself at extraneous risk for minimal objective reward?” Don’t take it personally, he tends to sound like that when he’s concerned.

I did see another of your “helpful diagrams” embedded in the puzzle you sent last time. And then I couldn’t stop seeing it for several hours afterwards, and possibly in all my most haunting nightmares. So thank you for that, and vengeance will be mine.

 

\--

 

[IMPSERV_MANNON_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3275LY2800]

 

To: C

From: J

Subj: RE: mynocks

tell K not to be a poodran. I’m fine. got a new job, settled a bit. also got that new recipe. nice coding, only took about 30 minutes to crack tho, even with that double blind hook at the end (nice try, I invented a double blind surprise, try harder, droid boy)

what the hells is mincing? how do you mince onion? sounds like that dance you were talking about a few months ago. am I supposed to dance on the onion? you are a very strange man.

new puzzle for K on the 2ndary account. should take him solid 2 hours this time.

 

\--

 

[IMPSERV_MYGEETO_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3276LY3253]

 

To: J

From: C

Subj: RE: space slugs

Sorry this took so long to reply. Been busy prepping for an upcoming project. Little concerned with that new job of yours that you mentioned. It’s not with the same people who got your arm broken, is it?

I don’t know why you didn’t like the vid. I thought you liked music? Was it the slugs? They seemed very sweet to me. I was hoping they would be a nice way to pay you back for all those educational pictures you’ve sent me.

 

\--

 

[IMPSERV_CARIDA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3276LY1012]

 

To: J

From: C

Subj: just in case

That big project I’ve been prepping for is coming up soon. I’m hopeful it will go well; it would be a real triumph for my company. Unfortunately, it will take a long time, and I will be very busy. The risks will be high. This is perhaps a stupid thing to do, but I find myself hating the idea of vanishing from your life without at least a farewell. In the event that I cannot write to you again, I just wanted to say thank you. For the codes, the jokes, and for checking in even when you had no reason to care. You have been a friend where I never expected to find one, and I cannot tell you how much it helped to know that you were out there somewhere, and safe.

If I succeed, then I will look for you as soon as I can. If I fail, then I will count myself fortunate to have known you.

 

\--

 

To: C

From: J

Subj: RE: just in case

You won’t fail. Odds don’t matter.

I’ll be here.

 

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book that Cassian recommends to Jyn is a [real in-universe academic paper](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Iconography_in_the_Age_of_Xim), which discusses the iconography of ancient civilizations and, as far as I'm concerned, 7000 year old butt-bat memes. Which Jyn is more than happy to share.
> 
> Cassian's What'sHap name comes from the also in-universe academic work, [Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tinker,_Tailor,_Soldier,_Praji:_A_Cartel_of_Genes), which itself is a reference to a [real world movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340800/). Recursive references!
> 
> There are also about a [dozen](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quarsh_Panaka) other [random references](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_creatures) in this chapter, [none](http://www.swgalaxymap.com/) of which you [really need](http://www.thehippyhomemaker.com/diy-natural-herbal-earth-paints/) to know, [but were fun](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rishi_Station) for me [anyway](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Droids,_Technology_and_the_Force:_A_Clash_of_Phenomena).
> 
> I put this in a comment below, but just for reference: I tried to embed the timeline at least somewhat in the [IMPSERV] lines. For example: the first communication between them (aside from the written note Cassian leaves for her) is logged on [IMPSERV_ NARSHADDA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3273LY6793] means that the message traffic routed through the Nar Shadda servers in Lothal Year 3273, which was 4 years prior to the events of Rogue One (3277LY = 0 BBY). So Jyn is roughly 19 years old when this chapter begins. By the end of the chapter, and their message traffic is on [IMPSERV_CARIDA_PUBLIC ACCESS_LOG #3276LY1012], Cassian is sending his message from [Carida](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Carida), and it's Lothal Year 3276, [(one year prior to the movie).](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/0_BBY)


	6. something in me understands (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cassian,” she asks, and notes the way his breath catches, “what now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a bit away from me, and as such is now split into 2 parts. I have no excuse.
> 
>  
> 
> _(i do not know what it is about you that closes_  
>  _and opens; only something in me understands_  
>  _the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)_  
>  _nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands_

Jyn is twenty-two years old the fifth time they meet, and she is exhausted. She’s doing a good job of hiding it, of course, shoulders relaxed, spine straight, smudged kohl around her eyes to hide the tired lines and occasional dark circles. She paints all six major gang signs on her doorframe in a blood-red color that she lets drip and melt down the cheap plas-wood as if it’s done with actual blood. The gangsters in this hellhole aren’t bright, but they’re brutal and territorial, and they respect that in her. She’s forced them to respect it - it took her months to carve out her little patch of no man’s land in the middle of their constant wars. She mostly did it by beating up prominent members of every single group, and then painting their names in red henna on her arms. These days, she doesn’t bother with the names – she’s forgotten them all anyway, sad-sack little shits – but she touches up those bloody gang signs every few weeks. Between that, her knife work, and her skill with slicing up new identities and scandocs, the gangs have learned to keep their turf wars off her street and never carry a weapon into her shop.

She’s due for a touch up on the paint soon, actually, the marks are looking watery brown from the humidity of the air here, but she can barely muster up the energy to care, and anyway, there’s no time. Twenty minutes ago, Deka commed her with a time-sensitive matter, informing her that the Forty Banthas were on their way to her workshop. Actually, the excitable Atoan had nattered at her that the “girls” had found a “bleeding _winner_ of a pickup, Thorn, a right _winner_ ,” and they needed her help to “slap the skinnies together to get it on the chopping block.” Jyn is reasonably sure this means that the Forty Banthas have somehow stolen something actually worth enough credits to make their crazy boss happy, and need her to fake registration documents so they can sell it.

She clears off her bench in the little room above the mechanics shop where she works as a part time employee and preps her specially-rigged console to slice into a couple Imperial databases she will need. Outside, thunder rumbles as yet another rainstorm rolls in. Everything on this planet is always so kriffing wet. Makes it harder to keep her electronics maintained, but that’s the basis of her income right now, so Jyn makes do. It will take two, maybe three hours, she calculates, depending on how hot the Banthas’ item is, and then she can spend the rest of the evening working in Eberle’s Mech Shop for some legit income. And then… maybe she’ll look for a few off-the-books jobs to run, because even her semi-regular job at the shop and her work for the gangs is barely enough for rent and power and shit else on this crappy world. And after she figures out how she’s going to pay her damn bills, then she could maybe sleep or she could work some more or…damn.

Jyn leans against her workbench and stares at her hands. _Five months_ , she thinks idly, and then grits her teeth and slaps an angry palm to the workbench surface. No. _No_. She is _not_ going to sit around and count the time since her last netmail from…her friend. She is not that girl. She’s never been that girl. And she never, ever will be.

It’s just that everything is so fucking exhausting these days, and it’s getting to her. It’s unbelievable how much energy it takes to just survive on this bloody Imperial-controlled planet – on every bloody Imperial-controlled planet, now that the new Tax Policy is in place and the stormtroopers have more “personal discretion” than ever, and even the dreaded “Rebel Insurgency” is barely powerful enough to make more than the occasional holonews story.

Her other option, of course, is burning her identity as Mira Thorn and heading deep into the Outer Rim worlds, maybe join a gang herself, or hells, _start_ a gang, maybe take up smuggling again like last year. She knows who she’d have to fight, who she’d have to kill, and she has a decent idea of where she can gather up some low-life buggers looking for a new party. Most of them will be just as eager to stick a dagger in her back, of course, the moment she turns it. But she would be ready for that, too.

Problem is, not one of those options sounds any less wearing than… _this_.

Another roll of thunder outside seems to suddenly transmute inside the building, and Jyn frowns for a moment before she recognizes the sound of multiple feet rushing up the stairs towards her workroom. Jyn sidesteps neatly out of immediately sight from the door and draws her blaster. It sounds like the heavy tread of the three biggest bruisers from the Forty Banthas, but just in case, no need to leave herself vulnerable.

“Thorn!” Bruna’s deep baritone shakes her thin plas-wood door and rattles the chipped mug sitting by her sink. “Thorn, we gotta package! C’mon, Thorn, open up.”

Jyn presses the lock release on her workbench that she installed the day she claimed this dump, and the door pops open with a click. The remote control lock wouldn’t save her from someone trying to break the cheap door down, but it’s hard to pick and lets her open the door without having to get within arm’s reach of the person on the other side. That saved her ass more than once during her brief, bloody skirmish with the local gangs.

Bruna crashes into Jyn’s small flat with a heavy black case cradled in her muscular arms. The shimmering diamond tattoo that marks her as one of the Forty Banthas’ enforcers, a Bantha Bitch, is hastily covered with a sloppily-tied bandana, a token acknowledgement of Jyn’s neutrality rule. Jyn eyes the black case warily. She told Crazy Allie Diamond that she wouldn’t work any more gemstone jobs for the Forty Banthas. They always steal shit that’s either amazingly difficult to fake a registry for, or not high quality enough to be worth the effort. Jyn made her point with her truncheon last time Crazy Allie sent Deka’s little group over with a load of Kolthis emeralds, and judging by the wary way Bruna is watching Jyn, she remembers that conversation all too clearly.

Behind Bruna, Deka slinks in, her cagey lilac eyes darting around the small space, looking everywhere but directly at Jyn. Apparently, Deka remembers that conversation too. Alright, so there probably aren’t gemstones in the case. But the Forty Banthas didn’t steal much else, what did they need Jyn’s services for?

She gets her answer a moment later, as two more of the gang’s Bitches drag their “bleeding winner” through her door and knock him roughly to his knees before her. Jyn’s eyes widen as she takes in the grey trousers, the torn and slightly blood-spattered undershirt, and the black bag over the man’s bent head. _Oh_ , she thinks, _shit_.

“Look at what we picked up, Thorn,” Deka says proudly, as Bruna shuffles as far from Jyn as she can manage and the other two bruisers keep their hands firmly on the man’s shoulders. “Fancy boy here all but walked into our loving arms, let me tell you, and damn, Thorn, he was practically begging’ to be – why are you closing all your curtains? Oy, what’s the deal with you, Th- ”

The Atoan chokes off with a squawk as Jyn grabs her roughly by the throat and slams her down on the workbench. Without looking away from Deka’s wide eyes, Jyn swings her blaster up to point squarely at Bruna, who freezes with one hand still clutching the black case and the other hand outstretched instinctively to help her friend. Behind Jyn’s back, the two bruisers shift, but they’re unwilling to take their hands off their prisoner. That tells Jyn that they know exactly how dangerous this _winner_ of theirs really is. Jyn drops her voice to a low growl and tightens her fingers around the startled Atoan’s throat. “You brought,” she snarls, leaning in close, “a fucking _Imperial officer_ to my _turf?_ ”

“Uh, well,” Deka squeaks, her eyes darting from Jyn to Bruna and back again. Her multiple pulses flutter against Jyn’s merciless fingers, and her pale pink skin is nearly grey. “We think he’s…actually…an Imp…spy?” Her voice grows progressively weaker and higher pitched, ending in terrified squeak at Jyn’s murderous expression.

“We’re gonna sell ‘im!” Bruna blurts out before Jyn can kill the idiot on her workbench with her glare alone. “To the rebels. Got a contact who says he’ll take him!”

Incredulous rage cascades through Jyn in a veritable avalanche of _you-have-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me._ An Imperial spy. And a rebel ‘contact’ coming to get him. Right, and she’s got some lovely seaside property on Hoth if they’re interested.

Oh flaming void, if Allie Diamond authorized this madness, then the woman has gone ‘round the bend (not surprising, given her penchant for beating people up with diamond-encrusted knuckle-dusters and carving her gang sign on their faces at the slightest insult). Or possibly Deka just overstepped her authority by a metric fuck-ton, and Crazy Allie is going to blow her toff. Either way, the Imps will be _swarming_ the whole thing faster than a frightened taun-taun can shit. Jyn needs to get clear of this mess. In fact, it’s probably time to get clear of this _planet_. Looks like she’ll be heading to the Outer Rim after all, damn it.

“Get him out of here,” Jyn grunts at Deka, and shoves her off the bench roughly. “Get out. All of you.”

“Aw, c’mon Thorn,” Deka whines, rubbing at her neck and stepping close to Bruna, who flexes threateningly but makes no move to get within Jyn’s reach. “Look, we just need some scandocs to get him off world.” She holds up her slightly shaking hands and gestures to the kneeling Imperial, who hasn’t twitched since they slammed him to the floor. “Scandocs and a permit to travel that says he’s Bruna’s brother or something. Easy day for you, right? And we’re promised plenty of credits for it, and I’m offering a solid seven hundred creds!” The Atoan’s eyes are wide and guileless, not a shred of deceit to be seen. Well, she’s no fighter and a complete dumbass if she thinks this deal won’t blow up in her pink face, but she’s a pretty good actor.

Jyn rolls her eyes and keeps her blaster pointed at the floor but ready to snap up and shoot at any moment. Across from her, the two Bantha Bitches holding the prisoner exchange glances, one of them easing a large machete from her belt and the other fingering a heavy club meaningfully. Jyn ignores them. Their grips tell her that they are only used to dealing with amateurs and the machete blade is half-dull anyway. Saw would have flogged them if they’d dared to try and walk into battle so unprepared.

Jyn glowers at the eerily-still prisoner. The sod is probably listening intently, charting out the area in his head, memorizing each voice for future identification, and making himself look as uninteresting and nonthreatening as possible. _Mental mapping,_ Cassian had told her once during one of their rare live text chats. _You would be surprised how much you can learn while blindfolded._

Jyn shoves the memory of how she’d replied to _that_ interesting opening deep into the back of her mind and focuses on the threat at hand. She jerks her chin at him and sneers, “And he’s just going to play along with your story, is he?”

The man’s covered head lifts slightly in response to her voice, and Jyn curses herself a little, because now he has _her_ voice, too. Now she’s linked to the Forty Banthas in his mind, and if (when) he gets loose from these insane fools, he’ll bring Imperial vengeance down on her head just as much as theirs. Definitely time to burn this identity and move on. Right the fuck now.

“No, no, he won’t have to. We’re gonna say he’s sickly,” Deka rushes to reassure Jyn, still waving her thin hands through the air. “Got some juice we’ll stick in him, show her, Bruna - ” Jyn winces again at the use of a real name out loud; the Forty Banthas are excellent thieves and deadly to double cross, but they are _not_ ready for the spy game, and certainly not ready to play at the Imperial level. They are all going to fucking die.

Bruna flips open the black case and opens it to display a long syringe and a vial of reddish fluid nestled in foam. Kriff, is that Ruby J? Jyn squints at the box, and simultaneously wants to laugh and groan. Ruby J is the more powerful cousin of Chalky J, the low-end crap the Forty Banthas like to use to knock out the guards at certain heists. Ruby J could certainly knock the spy for a loop for days, but it’s trickier than Chalky J, and the Banthas are likely to get the dosage wrong…and in that case, the spy definitely will not be a threat to Jyn anymore. The gangsters won’t get their payout, but the spy will be neutralized.

“So, just some scandocs, okay?” Deka smiles winningly, her eyes dewy and hopeful.

Jyn represses a defeated sigh, and returns Deka’s sweet smile with her own hard stare. The Atoan wilts a little under the weight of it, but to her credit she doesn’t collapse completely. “Two thousand,” Jyn says flatly.

“What!” Deka slaps her hands to her chest dramatically, a move that she must have learned from one of her Human gangster sisters, since Atoans are literally heartless. “Thorn! You must have us confused with those swanky Dandy Boys or the Scuttlers. You know we’re just working-class girls with a few sticky fingers.” Jyn snorts at that blatant lie, but Deka is determined to play the role of down-on-her-luck average jane. “You do the best work in the system, sister, but we can’t afford that kind of malarkey, and you know it. Come on, Thorn,” she clasps her hands to her chest again, and this time her smile has just an edge of irony as she adds, “have a heart.”

“Fifteen hundred,” Jyn bites out, unimpressed by the performance. “Or you get out now.”

Deka pouts slightly. “You are severely overestimating how - ”

Jyn raises her blaster and points it at Deka’s head, the one shot that is guaranteed to kill an Atoan. Silently, she waits. One breath. Two breaths. Three -

“Fifteen hundred,” Deka agrees weakly.

Jyn lowers the blaster, sets it pointedly in her holster without snapping the safety band over, and turns casually to her workbench. Male presenting, Human, roughly 1.8 meters tall, 70 to 75 kilograms. She needs fingerprints and a facial scan, of course. Hm. Facial scan. That is a problem. She’ll have to pull the hood off of him, and he will see her face. On the other hand, if the Forty Banthas give him even half of the Ruby J in that case, he’ll be dead in a couple of hours. Fifteen hundred credits will get her off world and decently padded until she gets her feet under her somewhere new. She might just have to risk it.

Fifteen hundred credits – shit, the “rebel contact” must have promised them a fucking _moon_ if they felt comfortable paying that much up-front cred. Even more indication that the contact is a fraud, and the Banthas are walking right into an Imperial trap.

Not her problem.

Jyn works fast, slapping together a decent set of scandocs that will at least help the gangsters get him through the port. If they drug him before then, he will indeed look very sickly, and they can pass off their story – probably. After that, it won’t matter how good his docs are, since he will be dead.

“Name?” She asks Bruna, and scowls impatiently at the startled look on the bruiser’s face.

“What?”

“Your _brother_ ,” Jyn sneers, gesturing at the Imp still kneeling quietly on the floor. Shit, that’s a really bad sign. If he isn’t even a little bit worried about this kidnapping, then there’s a good chance the arsehole is wearing a wire or a tracker, or knows his backup is on the way. Jyn needs to work fast as lightening, and send the lot of them as far the fuck away from her as possible before this whole thing blows up. Why is she even risking this? She’s been surviving just fine, even if it is a shite planet and a shite job and a shite life –

_There has to be more to life, he says softly against her throat, than just surviving._

Oh.

Jyn grimaces at her console, waiting until the coding streaming past her screen stops and the “Download Complete” flashes. She yanks the almost-finished scandocs from the console and flicks open the datachip. Fingerprint and facial scan, she thinks, although she pauses long enough to tap in one more command on her console:

[run://fuckoff.exe]

[running…]

[running…]

[flashing drive in 5…4…3…2…1]

Jyn turns away, listening to the reassuring beep as the drive wipes itself clean.

She walks across the flat and stands in front of the kneeling Imp, the scandoc facial reader open in one hand, and her blaster held steady in the other. If he tries anything, if the bruisers try anything, she will kill the lot of them and run for it. It will probably bring the locally garrisoned stormtroopers raining down on her head in a Kessel minute, but it will be her best chance. She eyes the black bag for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then glares at the left bruiser. “Face,” she snaps, holding up the scandoc reader.

The bruiser glances at Deka hovering nearby, and then jerks the bag away.

He lifts his head and looks her straight in the eyes, and Jyn’s heart stops.

He’s cut his hair into the short, neat style of an Imperial officer, a far cry from the shaggy shoulder-length mess it had been last time she saw him. His beard is likewise trimmed down into a neat goatee, and his face looks even more angular and hollow-cheeked than she has ever seen. His eyes, though, are the exact same eyes that she remembers, that she sometimes sees in her most restless dreams.

Cassian raises those dark, familiar eyes to hers, and all she can hear is a voice whispering against her temple, _I just wanted you to be safe._

To the side, Deka cocks her head curiously. A different voice in Jyn’s head that sounds suspiciously like Saw is bellowing at her in rage – she’s staring, she’s frozen, she’s raising their suspicion, _she needs to fucking move!_ But she can’t, because Cassian is kneeling on the hard floor before her in a torn up Imperial uniform, and these gangsters are…selling him to the Alliance? Wait, if he was posing as an Imperial, and these gangster morons think he’s a spy, is he posing as an Imperial spy? What does that mean – are the Imperials running him as a spy? Is this an op he’s doing for the Alliance under the guise of an op he’s doing for the Imps? Shit, she needs to react, but she doesn’t know what he needs her to _do_ –

Cassian’s mouth twists into a faint, ironic smile and he says quietly, “Find what you’re looking for?”

The irony in his voice hits her like a lightning bolt, sparks shiver down all her nerves and jolt her out of her funk. She still doesn’t know how to react, so wordlessly she raises the scandoc reader. Thin green lines bisect his face, and then the scandoc chirps and projects a holo-image of his head over the chip in her hand. Another chirp, and she shuts down the scanner.

“Fingerprints,” she says shortly, dropping his gaze and glancing at Deka. The Atoan’s face is mildly confused as she watches Jyn, but then she shrugs, clearly writing off the odd moment.

“Not sure we can do that safely,” Deka reaches up and fiddles with her hair nervously. “He _is_ an Imp spy, Thorn,” she smiles a little apologetically. Another heavy roll of thunder rattles the windows, warning them that the storm is almost on them now. Deka glances up at the ceiling unconsciously and tugs on her hair. “Can’t just let him loose, yeah?”

“We can tap him now,” Bruna offers, holding up the case.

Deka’s face lights up, and Jyn’s insides turn ice cold. On the floor, Cassian catches sight of the syringe, and his jaw tightens slightly. “Give it here,” Deka demands, grabbing the wicked device out and stabbing the needle into the red bottle top. The ice in Jyn’s gut spreads to her chest as she watches the idiot gangster fill the needle almost to the top. She’s measuring it like Chalky J, enough to knock out a grown man for a day or so. But that amount of Ruby J will kill Cassian in less than two hours, and when Deka turns toward her captive, Jyn sees him finally get a good look at what is in the syringe. His face pales, and he leans instinctively away. One of the bruisers tightens her grip on his shoulder and shoves him back roughly.

“Don’t look so peaky, honey,” Deka croons in what’s probably meant to be a soothing tone. “You’ll hardly feel it, promise.” She leans down and aims the needle at his neck with an expert eye. “Just a little stick, and then you’ll have a lovely nap while - ”

Jyn shoots her in the back. The gangster crashes forward into Cassian’s chest, then slides to the floor with a smoking hole between her shoulder blades. Before she’s all the way down, Jyn pulls her trigger one, two more times, and both bruisers drop just as hard.

A bellowing scream behind her –

Jyn whirls and drops to one knee to dodge the heavy fist that slams through the air where her head had been, and fires a wild shot upwards. Bruna staggers back, clutching at her belly with one hand, but her face is red with fury and her teeth are bared in hate, and Crazy Allie doesn’t call them her Bantha Bitches for nothing. Bruna lunges again, gets one large hand in Jyn’s hair and yanks to the side. Jyn sees stars as searing pain shoots through her scalp and down her neck. She fires another wild shot, misses, something shatters nearby. The world spins suddenly as Bruna flings her into a wall, and for a moment Jyn can’t even find her own damn feet or which way they ought to go, but she scrambles madly to figure it out before the raging bruiser gets her hands around Jyn’s throat and –

Someone tears the blaster from her hand and there’s another shot. Instinctively, Jyn curls herself into a ball, expecting to feel the searing heat of a bolt through her body unless Bruna actually gets a headshot because then she won’t feel anything at all but a brief sensation of heat and pain probably and _shit_ no no no she’s not ready to die not like this not

A heavy _thud,_ ringing silence, and then –

_“Jyn.”_

She opens her eyes. Cassian is kneeling above her, except his hands are free somehow, and one of them is armed. Her blaster, she notes with blurry recognition, and then everything snaps into focus. Bruna is face down on the floor behind Cassian with a sizable chunk of her head missing. The other three gangsters are just as still. A large puddle of red Human blood mixing slowly with purple Atoan blood is seeping across her floor, swirling a little around a discarded set of open wrist binders.

“Someone will have heard that,” Cassian says through the ringing of her ears, and Jyn finally notices his free hand hovering uncertainly in the air between them, like he started to reach for her and stopped himself halfway. “We need to go,” he says urgently, dipping his head to get her attention and draw her gaze up to his. “Jyn,” he says again softly, and she shivers before she can stop herself. “You need to run,” and he holds out her blaster, hilt first.

Jyn grabs it, but when he lets go and starts to pull his hand back, she reaches to catch it. “Cassian,” she says numbly, because she doesn’t know what else to say, and he takes a long, shaky breath.

“Not for a long time,” he answers in a choked voice. Jyn stares at him, knowing her confusion is written all over her face and not really caring because _what?_ What does that mean? Before she can figure it out, he winds their fingers together (his hands are clammy but steady against the fine tremor in hers) and says, “Do you have somewhere to go?”

That cuts through the haze in her brain at last, and Jyn pushes herself to her feet, yanking on his hand to pull him up too. “Yeah, safe house,” she mentally shakes herself and picks back up the checklist that she’d begun the moment she saw an Imperial uniform. _Shite, he’s wearing an Imperial uniform_. A messy, torn, slightly bloody one, too. There’s no way they can walk down the street like that. “Do _you_ have somewhere to go?” she demands, looking up at his face. She has to tilt her head back farther than she expects – did he grow again? Ah, probably not, she’s just…standing a little closer than she thought. And still clutching his hand. She should probably stop doing that.

Cassian is staring at her in turn, not answering, and his grip suddenly feels a little tighter than before as his eyes scan the left side of her face. He lifts his free hand and brushes at her hairline, and his fingers come away tinged red. She must have hit the wall harder than she thought. “No blue bandages here,” she mutters, and Cassian makes a faint sound that might be a choked off laugh.

“I don’t think you need it this time,” he says, his knuckles grazing her cheek lightly, and then he steps back, although he doesn’t let go of her hand. He tugs her towards her workbench, watches as she checks that her console is completely wiped and pops out the secret drawer with her own personal emergency scandocs inside. “Jyn, can you get to your safe house?”

“’Course,” she blinks at him. “But you need clothes.”

Cassian grimaces, glancing down at himself. “I’ll be fine,” he tries to sound reassuring, but it comes out too thin and unconvincing. “I just need to lay low for,” he makes a frustrated gesture, but his eyes never leave her face. “A while,” he ends lamely. “I’ve got someone coming to pick me up.”

“Rebel contact,” she says understandingly. “How long ‘til they are here?”

His face smooths out immediately, which tells her he’s worried. “Not too long. You need to get going.” Outside, there is the faint sound of sirens. Someone must have called the stormtroopers, who technically aren’t supposed to step on local law enforcement. They certainly like to throw their weight around, though, even if they are just as ineffective at controlling the gangs as the enforcers. “Now, Jyn,” Cassian sounds a little exasperated, pulling her toward the door, “you need to _run_.”

She blurts it out before she can think it through. “Come with me.”

“I…” Cassian stares at her, drops his eyes to their linked hands, and then looks back up. “Jyn,” he steps closer, too close again, and she has to crane her head back to look at him. “I’m going to draw too much attention like this. I didn’t expect them to,” he closes his eyes, sighs, “to rough up my clothes that badly. I thought they would want to keep me looking _Imperial,”_ he sneers out the word, “for the exchange.”

“You _wanted_ the Banthas to grab you?” Jyn’s mouth drops open. “ _Why?_ ”

The sirens are getting louder, a wailing counterpoint to the rumbling thunder. Cassian’s hand is tight around hers, and he shakes his head. “If I get out of here, I’ll tell you, okay? But you have to go.” He untangles their fingers, and steps back. “ _Go._ ”

She hesitates, but somewhere in her heart Jyn knows her choice is already made.

She lunges forward, grabs his hand again, and hisses, “Not without you.” It isn’t precisely what she had intended to say, but, well, fuck it. There’s no time. A sharp crack of thunder momentarily drowns out the sirens, and the small flat lights up briefly in the flash of lightning. If they leave right now, there’s a chance the storm will cover their trail. Jyn yanks on Cassian’s arm, and he stumbles from both the pull and the shock, staring at her with his mouth slightly open.

“Jyn,” he starts, and makes a half-hearted attempt to pull his hand back. The sirens are almost at the Mech Shop now, pulling up to the main garage entrance. They aren’t around the back, though, or on the roof, which are her two other escape options.

Jyn gets right into Cassian’s face and says it again. “ _Not without you_.”

He swallows, and then nods.

A heartbeat later, they’re out the door and she’s tugging him toward the roof access stairs. The building next door is close enough that they can jump across, but then they’ll have to get to the street levels and make their way…south, probably, through the Dandies’ turf, and then the Scuttlers’. The news that Mira Thorn violated her own neutrality rule would get around fast, and the Forty Banthas would be howling for her blood, but there’s enough time to get to her safe house and hunker down. She’s working out the odds of running across a Dandy doing a Fashion Walk or a Scuttler on the prowl when the sky suddenly opens up and sheets of freezing cold rain drop on their heads like the wrath of a vengeful god. Between mental curses, Jyn scratches out any chance of running into a Dandy, at least, and the Scuttlers aren’t likely to hang around in this frigid mess either.

They might just make it. Ice cold water is already dripping down her spine and puddling in her boots, but Cassian’s hand is warm in hers, and _they might make it_. Jyn grips him tight and _runs._

The only good part about the rain is that the sirens choke off almost immediately, because neither enforcers nor 'troopers are about to chase around in this storm for some nobody slicer, no matter how many bodies she left behind. And as she predicts, not a single Dandy or Scuttler accosts them as they duck their way through back alleys and winding streets. She even dares a shortcut through the Mad Tea Party’s turf, and not a single breadknife comes flying from the shadows. So Jyn is shaking with cold and terror but also a little relief by the time they turn the corner and sanctuary comes into view.

Her safe house is a small basement flat rented out under yet another assumed identity from a half-blind old man who keeps too many tooka cats and sometimes forgets to collect rent. Jyn likes it for its multiple discreet exits and the comfort of a landlord who wouldn’t recognize his tenant if someone showed him a lifesized holoimage. Still, Jyn takes the time to check the windows and make sure no one is home before ducking around the back and leading Cassian to her hiding hole.

“Home away from home?” he asks quietly, a faint smile in the corners of his eyes as they duck into the narrow entrance hall and he watches her throw all five latches shut.

Jyn scrubs rainwater from her eyes and drags him into the larger of the two rooms, where she’s converted her small kitchen/living space into a messy sort of workroom, and flicks on the dim light. “So tell me,” she counters, “what’s a nice rebel like you doing in a dump like this?” Abruptly, she realizes that she’s still clutching his hand, and forces herself to drop it.

He winces, and flexes his newly freed fingers absently. Jyn turns away to check that the blinds on her small, high-set windows are drawn tight. The lightning is flashing in earnest now, drawing crazy lines of brilliant light around the edges of the blackout curtains until she settles them more securely. Thunder rattles the windows and even the walls, and the pounding of the rain is outmatched only by the howling of the wind. Jyn shivers; they need to get out of these soaked clothes. She might have something for him but…

Cassian is still silent behind her, and Jyn stops fiddling with her home-made security alerts around the windows and turns to stare. His eyes look shadowed and he’s watching her like he’s balancing on some thin wire, unsure about his next step. Jyn grits her teeth, tries to stomp down on the surge of bitter anger his caution incites. Well, what did she expect? So they exchanged a few netmails over the years, so they shared a few jokes in Shimmer chats – so what? It wasn’t like they were actually friends. Technically, they weren’t even allies. Jyn shrugs off the frustration as best she can and pushes past him, towards the small bedroom with the crate of stolen clothes -

“Extraction,” Cassian says suddenly, and his eyes widen slightly as if he’s surprised even himself. “I was - ” he swallows, takes a deep breath, and looks her square in the face. “I’ve been working as a personal aide to an Imperial officer, but it was time to get out.”

An officer high enough to get a personal aide? The only one around here who merits that would be - “Grendreef,” she says without thinking, and then throws her hands up defensively when his eyes narrow. “Only Admirals and Generals get _personal_ aides. Everyone else, administrative aide. Grendreef is the only ranking arsehole in the system.”

Water is running down the sides of his neck, and they are both forming little pools under their boots. Cassian nods slowly, then scrubs at his face with both hands. “Yes,” he says at last, and she can hear the weary acceptance in his voice, see the quiet surrender in his body language. “Yes, I have been working for Grendreef. But I needed to get out without him knowing I was…not the sycophantic lieutenant he thinks.”

Jyn tugs the heavy crate full of clothes open and rifles through it, pulling out a pair of men’s trousers and a shirt she picked off a fallen Scuttler at one point, meaning to sell the quality cloth. Fortunately, she’d forgotten. They will be baggy on Cassian’s slighter frame, but they aren’t torn or blood-spattered. Not anymore, anyway. She throws them at Cassian, and then fishes out an overlarge shirt and tattered but serviceable sweatpants for herself. “If you blew your cover on the way out,” she agrees, muffled slightly by the sopping fabric of her overshirt as she pulls it over her head, “then it would compromise everything you stole, yeah?”

“Yes,” he says with a soft, derisive laugh. “I needed something a little more creative.”

Jyn peels off her soaked combat bra with a grimace, belatedly realizes what she’s doing, and snaps her head up to see – the back of Cassian’s head. He’s turned away from her, stripping off his own shirt and scrubbing at his dripping hair. His torso looks…surprisingly defined, actually, given how skinny the man is. Ribs are a little too prominent, but no major scars or - his hands drop to his fasteners and he starts to push his trousers down over his hips, and Jyn jerks away, furious and embarrassed at the flush of red she can feel heating her cheeks and running down her chest. She isn’t fourteen anymore, she doesn’t have an excuse.

Irritation lends an edge of derision to her voice as she strips out of her remaining wet clothes with brutal efficiency. “So what, you ran out and begged the first gangsters you could find to smuggle you out?”

“Credit me with a little sense,” he snorts. “I contacted the Forty Banthas as a rebel looking to catch an Imperial spy. I told them his name, his location…”

Jyn grins and pulls the dry shirt over her head. “His appearance, his habits…” The fabric of the shirt scrapes a little against her chilled skin and cold nipples, but she rubs her chest and arms ruthlessly until she adjusts.

“Exactly.”

Jyn listens to the rustle of cloth behind her as she wiggles into the sweatpants and unwinds her wet hair, wringing it out over her drenched clothes. Behind her, she can hear Cassian set his Imperial boots down near the door and adds with a frustrated grunt, “I offered them a lot of credits to capture me _alive_.”

“Banthas use Chalky J to knock out guards,” she risks a glance over her shoulder, just in time to see him doing the same. They blink at each other, but they are both fully dressed, Jyn thinks irritably, so there is no reason they should both jerk back around. And yet, here she is, still staring at the wall. She rolls her eyes and deliberately turns around again. “So they probably picked up Ruby because they thought the same amount of that would just knock you out a little longer.”

“That’s not how that works,” Cassian takes a cautious look back at her, and then turns slowly when she raises an eyebrow. The clothes are too big on him, but then, she’s practically swimming in hers. She gathers up her soaked outfit and gestures for him to bring his over to the small ‘fresher, where they throw the lot over the towel bars and let it drip.

“Jewel thieves, Cassian,” she reminds him, trying very hard not to notice when his shoulder brushes hers in the cramped space. “They know how to slice locks and hide fancy rings in their hair. Chemistry’s not their thing.”

“That’s no excuse,” he jokes lightly, turning to the side to let Jyn sidle past him out into the room. Their eyes catch for a moment as she slides past with only a few centimeters between them, and Jyn thinks _too close_ before she drops her gaze and shuffles out. Behind her, he clears his throat and adds, “Education is important.”

“Not everyone reads random crud like books about ancient graffiti in their spare time,” she snorts, pausing at the bedroom door and looking back at him. “Or how primitive societies used to booze up on bread or whatever.”

“So you did read _The History of Vice_.” Cassian’s mouth curves slightly at one side, and Jyn feels her own mirroring him.

“Said I would. Liked the bit with the convors and the monkeys.”

He nods thoughtfully. “You would.”

He’s standing a much more normal distance from her now, his legs almost backed against her bed. It’s only a couple of old mattresses on the floor with a heap of blankets and a few scraggly pillows. If she gave him the smallest shove, he would go sprawling back -

“So,” she says a little sharply to cut off her own thoughts. “How does being captured by gangsters guarantee that the data viewed by Lieutenant…” she cocks an eyebrow – he probably won’t tell her, but she has never been one to shy away from testing boundaries.

“Lieutenant Joreth Sward,” he says quietly, and Jyn’s heart cartwheels briefly in her chest. He shouldn’t tell her that. He shouldn’t _trust_ her like that. But he looks her straight in the eye and he tells her his deep cover name for an op he didn’t know he would survive (it’s been five months since he wrote _you have been a friend where I never expected to find one,_ but Jyn remembers reading those words the first time with a crystal clarity that she doesn’t want to examine too closely).

Thunder rolls again, so loud that the whole building shakes. Jyn turns away from Cassian, headed for the kitchen to check on food. She has food. In the kitchen. She should get some out. “So how does being captured by gangsters mean the stuff you stole isn’t compromised?”

“Not captured,” he corrects, following her into the small kitchen and leaning against the counter top while she shuffles through her nearly bare cabinets, pulling out cans and packets. “Killed.”

Jyn pauses, a box of freeze-dried meat-mix in one hand and a dinged up pot in the other. _What?_

“People on this world get caught in gang cross fire all the time,” he shrugs, reaches out and plucks the box from her hand and wrinkles his nose at the ingredients. “Idiot junior officer wanders into the wrong turf, Grendreef makes some scripted speech about service and honor, and no one thinks twice except to fight over the newly open position.” He shoves away the breading packet that’s supposed to go with the meat-mix when she offers it, reaching over her head to grab a spice pack from a different veg-mix instead.

“And you end up in the custody of a ‘rebel spy,’” she smirks and lets him bump her gently away from the stove with his hip. “How were you going to pull off being both the rebel spy and the Imp spy? At the exchange?”

He flicks her a quick sideways look and dumps half of the spice packet in with the insta-meat and about a third of the water the instructions call for. “Kay,” he says after a beat, and Jyn’s heart twists again. Another piece of his trust, handed to her as casually as she hands him the only spoon she has so he can stir the pot. “He will be on the shuttle, acting as a go-between. Or he would have been.”

“Wait,” Jyn stiffens, watching his hands, which freeze under her stare. “Is this that stew you sent me once? With the pta fruit?”

“You remember,” he sounds pleased and a little surprised, his eyebrow quirking up as his mouth pulls into a sweet half-smile. There’s something else in his face that she can’t parse, something bright and fragile and only just visible moving behind his eyes.

Jyn nods, not trusting herself to speak until he looks back down at the simmering pot.

“I guess we will manage without pta fruit,” he continues thoughtfully. “It will be a little bland, but…”

“It was fine last time I tried to make it.” She catches him watching her from the corner of his eye and shrugs elaborately, overacting in an attempt to disguise the way his smile had knocked her momentarily dumb. “Well, it was alright.” She purses her lips and tilts her head thoughtfully. “Edible, anyway.”

“Flatterer,” he chuckles, a low, smooth sound that burns down her spine like a fuse and sets something in her smoldering. The rough shirt is rubbing against her again, scraping over her strangely sensitive nipples and making her hyperaware of her own skin. Jyn wraps her arms tight around herself and focuses on looking calm as they settle into a comfortable silence broken only by the scraping of the spoon and the pounding of the rain. It's only the adrenaline, she reminds herself, and excitement at meeting up with a friend. Sort of a friend. Pen pal? That she once kissed. Hells, she's being ridiculous.

The words are harder to dredge up than they should be, but as he dumps half of the stew into a large chipped mug for her and eats his own half from the pot, she finally forces herself to ask. “When is Kay coming to pick you up?”

Cassian nods to her mug with his eyebrows raised in question, and she smirks and takes a large swallow, enjoying the warmth as much as the taste. But when she lowers the mug, she makes a bland face and shrugs again. He rolls his eyes, and then shoves a piece of meat into his own mouth like it’s been days since he last ate. Maybe it has. “Already came. Kay should have gone back in orbit once the rendezvous time passed. He’ll stay up for another twenty hours, then come back for a second attempt.”

Despite herself, Jyn’s heart stutters. _Twenty hours_. She hasn’t spent twenty hours with him total since they met ten sodding years ago.

The initial edge of his hunger seems to have worn off, and his spoon is slowing down into a familiar rhythm. Jyn’s lips quiver as she fights the urge to laugh. He looks at her through his eyelashes and mutters, “Don’t say it.”

“Won’t,” she mutters back, and then stage-whispers, “ _rhythm box_.”

Cassian runs his hand through his still wet hair, and casually flicks a few drops of water at her. “Childish,” she says archly.

“You started it,” he replies in the same tone, and Jyn drains the last of her own stew with a smirk.

He rinses his pot out in the little sink and reaches out to grab her empty mug from her hands. His fingers brush over hers and impulsively she asks, “What now?”

His movements slow but he covers it smoothly, washing out her chipped, mismatching dishes and flipping them to dry. “It’s your safe house.” He points with his chin at the small covered window over the sink as he dries his hands on his shirt. “Your turf.”

 _Your lead_ , he doesn’t need to say out loud.

Jyn bites her lip and considers him. There are a hundred things they should talk about, she knows. They should plan how they will make it to K2SO tomorrow. Compare notes on the local gangs. Hells, she needs to dig out her secondary blaster from under the bed and show him the quirk in the firing crystal, so he can be armed when they move out. A hundred things to discuss about their survival. The thunder outside is still loud and insistent, the rain battering on the walls and windows, but inside there is nothing but the muffled rain and their breath to hear.

“The net here is shite,” she says slowly, watching him warily as he turns from the sink to face her. “But good enough to watch a holostream.”

That look from before brushes across Cassian’s face again, pleasant surprise and a hint of something else, something she can’t name but thinks she might like. “You still watch that history ‘stream?” he asks, stepping away from the counter towards her.

Jyn shakes her head with a touch of regret. “It got cancelled, I think,” she scowls a little, then lets it fade and pushes off the wall she’s been leaning on. “Think they didn’t piss on the Republic enough.”

He grimaces, but takes another step. “Pity.”

Jyn shrugs is off and resists the impulse to bite her lip. “You still watch that cooking show?”

“Baking,” he corrects, holding up one finger admonishingly. “As you know. And yes,” he’s just within arm’s reach now, but he stops, ducking his head slightly. He won’t come closer, his expression tells her, unless perhaps she invites him. “My favorite contestant almost got sent home last week,” he says conversationally, though his hands are curled into half fists and his eyes are fixed on her face.

“Why?” Jyn uncrosses her arms and drops them to her sides; the huge sleeves of the shirt drape down over her hands and she wipes her suddenly clammy hands on the cloth.

“Something wrong with her icing I think,” he says vaguely, not moving.

“And they were going to boot her for that?”

He smiles again, not quite as confidently as before, but the gentle edge of it knocks the breath from her lungs anyway. “It’s very competitive, Jyn. I think you would like it.” He licks his lips, and from the look on his face, she doesn’t hide the way her eyes flick to them very well. “Someday I’m going to convince you to watch it.”

The innocuous joke hits her like a brick to the brain. _Someday_ , he says, and Jyn sucks in a breath because this is the first time either of them have ever even _suggested_ –

He registers what he’s said a moment after she does, and his lips thin out, but he doesn’t take it back.

Jyn swallows, and steps forward. “Alright,” she manages softly. “Someday.” Then before either of them can speak again, before she can overthink it, she takes the last step and drags her fingers down his jawline and up to his mouth.

“Jyn,” he murmurs against her fingertips, so she drops her hand to his chest for balance and leans up to kiss him.

It’s not like the last one (the first one); it’s little more than a soft brush of her lips against his, warm but careful. Jyn pulls back and meets his eye again, and there’s that expression again, and she’s starting to think she does recognize that bright something behind his eyes, that it might just be what hope looks like.

“Cassian,” she asks, and notes the way his breath catches, “what now?”

“Will you - ” he stops, closes his eyes, and leans down until his forehead rests against hers. “It’s been months since anyone’s said my name,” he confesses, his breath curling against her cheek and setting all her nerves sparking. Her skin is no longer chilled – instead it feels flushed and oversensitive and far too tight around her body, like any moment she will burst out of it in a blaze of fire. Jyn runs her palms up his chest and around his neck, pulling him closer, wrapping herself around the small, warm space they’ve created between them again.

“It’s been years since anyone’s said mine,” she whispers back, “except you.” And then, because she knows what he’s asking even if he can’t quite shape it, she slants her mouth lightly against his and says, “I missed you, Cassian.”

Cassian throws his arms around her waist and hauls her tight against him, close enough to feel the shudder that runs through him when she gasps against his ear, close enough to burn away the last lingering cold from the rain. “Tell me what you want,” he says into her shoulder, his fingers curling into her shirt and pulling it tight around her. She wants to rip it off, wants to shove him back against the wall, wants to kiss him breathless and then maybe go out and fight every gangster on this planet, and every stormtrooper, and _hells_ , while she’s at it, the Emperor too. “Jyn,” Cassian’s voice drops low as he presses his face into her neck and holds her like she matters, and she can’t keep this moment but she would burn the Empire to the ground for a chance to try, “tell me what you want.”

A thousand answers flash through her mind, but in the end, Jyn closes her eyes and gives him the truth. “This,” she admits, and when she kisses him again, she breathes his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Forty Banthas are my SW version of the real-world, all female gang, [The Forty Elephants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Elephants), also known as the “Forty Thieves,” who were led by Alice Diamond, a woman who did indeed enjoy smashing people up with jewel-encrusted brass knuckles. The women were bad-ass thieves, and although I did not find any evidence that they routinely drugged men to get what they wanted, I decided that it sounded like something future space shoplifting gangster women would maybe not be afraid to do.
> 
> Speaking of drugs: Ruby J and Chalky J are totally made up, but they are based on a real-world drug [ketamine](https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml#im), my research for which probably put me on some sort of watch list.
> 
> [Atoans](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Atoan) do not, in fact, have centralized hearts.
> 
> I believe it is canon that Cassian worked undercover as Joreth Sward for Imperial Admiral [Grendreef](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grendreef), who was apparently a very nasty sack of shit. I don’t know what planet this happened on, so I left the name vague, but wherever it was, I decided it was absolutely rife with gangsters.


	7. something in me understands (part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(i do not know what it is about you that closes_   
>  _and opens; only something in me understands_   
>  _the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)_   
>  _nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands_

Jyn is twenty-two years old the fifth time they are together, and she’s breathless. It isn’t just that Cassian’s kissing her, although the warmth in his lips alone would be enough to make her light-headed. It isn’t just the way his hands slide up and down her back, combing gently through her still-damp hair, skimming down to curl around her hip, the soft caress of his fingers down the line of her hip towards her thigh and then back up her side, restlessly stroking every part of her he can reach. It isn’t even the determined, languid way he kisses her like he has all the time in the galaxy and no attention to spare for anything other than the feel of her.

Jyn has kissed before; when her blood was up, when someone challenged her just right, when the crushing weight of a life lived utterly on her own became too much, she’s shoved an amenable sentient or two up a nearby wall and pretended it was real connection for awhile.  It was always just that, though – a short reprieve from solitude, a chance to feel living warmth against her skin, a brief moment to forget that she was adrift in a galaxy that had no use for her. But even with the best of her lovers (if she’s generous enough to call them that), there has always been the knowledge in the back of her brain or in the center of her chest, hard and sharp like a razor blade, that she could never close her eyes, never turn her back, never let them move her out of reach of her weapons.

What knocks the air from her lungs and makes her feel giddy and reckless and a little wild is the sudden realization that right now - with Cassian’s hands slipping under the edge of her baggy shirt and tracing soft, skittering patterns on her lower back and his mouth slow but insistent against her own – that razor blade of fear and doubt is…gone.

In its place, Jyn feels a small, fluttery, terrifyingly fragile wisp of something that reminds her of the look in Cassian’s eyes just before she kissed him. It feels like hope, and it scares the many hells out of her.

Cassian’s hands are curving around her waist and up her sides again, and Jyn can taste the spices of the stew he made and she can hear the thunder of her heartbeat loud in her ears and –

_BOOM!_

The whole house shakes like a grenade has just gone off against it, and Jyn’s muscles jerk with shock and fear and instinctive rage. She doesn’t think, only reacts, flinging her weight against Cassian to knock him back and slamming them down to their knees. She desperately tries to throw her arms over his head, but she’s hampered by the fact that he’s clutching her to his chest and curling his body over her in an attempt to shield her from the shrapnel –

\- which isn’t flying around them. There’s nothing but the pounding of Cassian’s heart against her ear and the heavy but still muffled sound of rain drubbing against the unbroken windows.

Jyn blinks, and then above her head Cassian suddenly swears viciously in a language she doesn’t understand, although it sounds like a blurred form of Alderaanian.

She looks up at him, bewildered, then at the completely untouched safe house, and finally back to meet his eyes. Cassian gives her slightly sheepish look. “Thunder,” he says unevenly, and then he clears his throat and adds with an awkward little smile, “Sounds like the storm is, ah, close.”

Her face flushes abruptly, and she has to look down. They both relax slightly back on their knees, which pulls them apart. Her eyes settle on her hands, which are still gripping his wrists. She can see her blue veins in her own pale wrist, and if she looks hard enough, she imagines she can see her pulse still racing. Shit, that’s embarrassing. She needs to let go of him, get a grip on herself.

“Jyn,” Cassian says quietly, voice still a little rough. His hands twist under hers and return her grip, and she decides not to let go either, not just yet. “Are you…” he trails off, and Jyn dares to look up, ordering her face to stop being stupid and red and ridiculous. It doesn’t work, but she ignores it and focuses on his eyes.

Cassian swallows, and then drops his chin and sighs, looking down at their joined hands with a vaguely lost look. It comforts her a little, actually, to know that he doesn’t know what they should do now any more than she does. They are both of them on unfamiliar ground.

She considers for a moment, but her blood is still burning under her skin and the razor blade is still missing from her chest, so she pushes up to her feet and tugs on his arms until he staggers up beside her, and then she turns and walks the short distance into the bedroom. He follows without comment, though she doesn’t dare look back at him until they are standing by the messy bed. It occurs to her that she’s never actually brought anyone to her own bed before. In fact, she can’t even remember the last time she screwed someone in an actual bed at all. Hells, what is she even doing? Some of the heat still lingering in her skin starts to turn from simmering desire to crackling irritation as she considers how fumbling she must look right now, how strange and stupid and –

 Cassian steps close behind her and settles his hands lightly on her hips. “Nothing has to happen,” he says quietly into her ear.

It’s like a cool hand on her feverish brow or a caress down her neck. Slowly, she feels her shoulders relax, her bristling irritation fade. “No, it doesn’t,” she agrees as firmly as she can, and then turns to face him and rests her palms against his chest. “But I want it to.”

The tense lines of his face relax into a small smile. He leans his head down and presses a soft kiss to her cheek, then another to the corner of her mouth. Jyn curls her fingers against his ribs and –

\- and he jerks slightly under her touch. _Wait, what?_

She curls her fingers again in the same spot, and this time Cassian’s hands fly up from her waist to her wrists, trapping her hands against his sides. Jyn’s eyebrows quirk up, and she leans back slightly to meet his wide eyes. He wipes the look from his face in a blink, but it’s too late. She’s seen it. She _knows_.

“Cassian,” she says in a low voice, her lip curling.

“No,” he cuts her off firmly.

“Are you actually - ”

“Don’t.” There’s an edge of warning, and just the hint of a plea in his tone. Jyn’s lip curls further.

“You are, aren’t you?”

_“Jyn.”_

“Ticklish,” she finishes triumphantly, and despite his grip, manages to wiggle her fingers against the sides of his ribs.

Cassian jerks again, his eyes narrowing (but she can see the laughter still gleaming behind them, and it makes her bold, makes her restless, makes her _want_ ). “Not at all,” he says repressively. His severe expression is colored with mild alarm, however, when Jyn’s smirk stretches into a grin. “Jyn,” he repeats in what he probably thinks is an ominous tone. “Whatever you’re thinking…”

“Hm?” She relaxes her stance and tilts her head, still grinning.

“Stop thinking it,” he orders, and shuffles a little further back.

Jyn lunges, using her grip on his shirt to yank him in, hooking her ankle around his and dragging him off balance. She twists, using his stumble to throw his weight down and around, until he lands with a grunt on his back on the bed. Quick as a blaster bolt, she pins him with her hands on his shoulders and her knees gripping his hips, her bare feet pressing tight against his thighs. It’s not a perfect pin, of course, because his arms are free, but he doesn’t seem inclined to let go of her waist. She shifts her weight off her hands so she can slide them down and hunt for that spot on his ribs again. That turns out to be a misjudgment, because Cassian suddenly grabs the edge of her shirt and yanks deftly upward, and her awkward balance allows him to flip it over her head and momentarily tangle her in it. Jyn makes an undignified noise as her vision fills with faded green, and then the cool air hits her suddenly bared skin and she blinks in surprise down at Cassian. He folds the baggy shirt into a sloppy square with far too casual an attitude for a man pinned by a half-naked woman, and tosses it onto the nearby crate where she piles her clothes.

Cassian rests his head back on the mattress and watches her with a calm, unruffled expression, as if she’s just said something mildly interesting and he’s politely waiting for her to finish. His eyes stay firmly on her face, not so much as flicking to her naked breasts, and his hands are relaxed on her hips. But Jyn raises a sardonic eyebrow at him, because for all his cool exterior, she is sitting in a very strategic place and she knows exactly how affected he really is. “Nice move,” she says at last.

“Thank you,” he replies in a gracious tone that perfectly matches his expression.

Jyn rocks her weight just slightly against his lower body, fighting to keep her own face neutral despite the building pressure and heat between her legs. She feels his fingers twitch against her hips and she snorts. He doesn’t give in, though, his face fixed in a polite mask that she imagines wouldn’t be out of place in a board room meeting. A dark voice in the back of her mind mutters that it’s no wonder he’s survived among the Imps so long, but she slaps it down before it can taint the rest of her thoughts.

“So,” she asks conversationally, wiggling a little as she settles again and smirking at him. “What now?”

“That depends,” Cassian’s voice is only slightly strangled, but his face is still astonishingly, irritatingly, _challengingly_ calm.

She shifts her weight again, leaning a little further down, both impressed and annoyed that his eyes never once flick downward even as his thighs shiver slightly with tension under her. “On what?”

“What you want,” he says quietly, and for a second, Jyn forgets about the game they’re playing and just looks at him. He’s thinner and more angular than is typically considered handsome. There are faint shadows under his eyes and his ribs are too prominent against her fingers, and while his hair and beard are as short and neat as Imperial regulation demands, they are not quite in line with current Core fashion. There is nothing in his features that she would call striking; he would blend into any crowd on any world where humans are unremarkable (which is most of them), and no one who saw him would remember he had been there.

His sharp eyes are watching her carefully now, his hands pulling slightly away from her hips and hovering a millimeter from her skin. He looks at her like he knows exactly what she thinking, because he is thinking it too. This is crazy, the most insane thing they could possibly be doing, the most insane thing she’s probably ever done. Maybe it’s the same for him. Maybe that’s why he isn’t quite touching her, isn’t making any effort to reel her in closer or push the issue. If she gets up right now, Jyn knows down in her bones, he will make no move to stop her, and probably won’t say a word about it, afterwards.

Lightning flashes in a thin strip around the edge of the blackout curtain over her window, slicing a brilliant white line across his face and chest and briefly throwing his features into sharp relief. The accompanying thunder rattles the walls around them. Cassian’s dark eyes stay steady on hers, and this time, Jyn doesn’t flinch.

 He’s beautiful.

“I want three things,” Jyn says, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “First - ” she leans down and kisses him, searing and needy, and smiles against his mouth when his hands latch back onto her hips hard enough to bruise. She nips his bottom lip lightly and then pulls away, smirking at the soft protesting noise he makes when she sits up again. “That,” she says triumphantly to his wide eyes and panting breath.

Cassian draws in a deep breath, and then slides his hands from her hips to her shoulders and pulls her urgently down again. “Second?” he asks against her collarbone, before his mouth moves further south.

“I want to watch that cooking show you keep talking about,” she manages to gasp despite the sweet shock of his tongue on her sensitive skin.

He pulls away from her long enough to mutter “ _baking”_ in an exasperated tone, but Jyn rolls her hips, and he abandons the argument in favor of putting his tongue to better uses.

The rough fabric of her stolen trousers is grating against her uncomfortably now, so Jyn decides this is a good moment to be rid of them. Her hands are shaking slightly, making her pathetically awkward with the clasps, but Cassian figures out what she’s up to and helpfully pushes her fumbling fingers aside to unsnap the buttons himself. Jyn takes advantage of his distraction to shove his shirt up to expose his chest, and decides to see if he likes her mouth on him the same way she liked his a moment ago.

Judging by the way his body arches up to meet her, he does.

She hears him yank the last snap open on her trousers and kicks them off without much thought for where they land, but in the middle of her chest the faintest edge of the razor blade starts to press against her heart. Not an hour ago she was running for her life through gang-controlled turf, and now she’s completely naked, on her hands and knees over a man she’s met four times before. The closest weapon is her secondary blaster, tucked in a small case under both mattresses and not easily accessible from this position. Her knives are all on the counter out in the kitchen. The thunder rolls again, almost as loud as the ear-splitting concussion that startled them so badly before, and Jyn shudders before she can stop herself. The skin on the back of her neck starts to tighten, and the razor blade digs just a little harder.

Cassian suddenly loops his arms around her waist and rolls, and Jyn almost instinctively lashes out to throw him off, but his body settles against her softly and once they are flipped he braces himself up on his elbows and meets her eyes. She stills beneath him, and to her astonishment, the warmth and the weight of him dulls the edges of the razor blade and settles the pinched sensation on her neck. He’s between her and the door, she thinks muzzily. She told him once that she liked to have things between her and the door when she slept, barriers and stumbling blocks, and he remembers.

“Third?” he asks, startling her out of her scattered thoughts.

“Third,” she repeats flatly, confused.

“The third thing you want, Jyn,” Cassian sounds a little breathless but still calm, and his body is pressing her against the mattress but he’s not holding her anywhere. She could kick him off in a heartbeat, and they both know it, so it doesn’t feel like a pin or a trap.

It feels like a choice.

“Right,” she agrees vaguely, and heat surges up in her blood again. “The third thing.” Tentatively, she sketches one shaking fingertip up his throat and along his jawline, drawing a feather-light circle over his cheek and then down to his lips.

“Jyn,” he asks against her finger, and the catch in his voice belies the steady way his eyes stay fixed on hers. He’s cautious and a little uncertain, but the bright, fragile spark of hope is still there, and Jyn feels her own answering spark flaring in her chest as she looks at him. “What do you want?”

She grabs at the edge of the razor blade in her heart, and almost laughs when she finds that the edge is brittle and crumbles away almost instantly. She smiles up at Cassian, lets him see in her eyes what she has already seen in his, and she’s pressed so tightly against him that she can feel his heartbeat stutter for a moment in response. Thoughtfully, she traces her fingertip back up his jawline and slips her hand into the hair at the nape of his neck. In as serious a tone as she can muster, she tilts her head and asks, “Would you like me to show you a helpful diagram?”

Cassian closes his eyes and drops his head to her shoulder. Jyn feels a brief flash of worry when his chest starts to shake, and then he bursts into quiet laughter against her neck. She lets him chuckle for a minute, basking in the sound of his laugh and feeling just a little bit smug, but then the restlessness is back with a vengeance, and Jyn decides he needs to start moving or she’s going to have to resort to drastic measures. She rolls her hips and kisses the soft spot behind his ear, her hands pulling insistently on his back, his neck, his hair, until he lifts his head at last.

“Yes. But one condition,” he says with mocking gravity, catching one of her roaming hands and pressing a kiss to her palm. “You have to encrypt it first. At least two layers and a blind-hook. You have an hour to package it.” He pushes up to his hands, as if to leverage himself up and away from her. “I’ll wait.”

“ _Wild dogs to piss in your throat_ ,” she growls in shoddy Huttese, locking her legs around his hips and glaring at him.

He huffs another laugh. “ _Shyracks to nest in your anus_ ,” he shoots back almost cheerfully in an annoyingly better Hutt accent, and finally allows Jyn to drag him down and kiss the smirk off his face.

This isn’t Jyn’s first time, of course. Her own personal experience isn’t vast, but hells, the Partisans weren’t exactly picky about how or when or even _where_ they blew off steam, and no one has censored a racy holostream or film around Jyn since she was eight. After years of living in cantinas and back alleys and gambling dens, she had thought herself well versed in just about every way that sentients could hook up. But this, here in this dim lit room with the storm outside and Cassian’s heartbeat against hers, this is a series of firsts for things she never imagined.

Cassian presses soft but insistent kisses along her throat, her chest, her belly, and it’s the first time anyone’s ever kissed her like they enjoyed it, like it was worth the time and not just a prelude to the fucking. He pulls off his own ill-fitting, stolen clothes, and it’s the first time anyone has ever stripped entirely for her, like she’s earned that kind of trust. He laughs against her shoulder and tries to catch her hands when she ghosts her fingers over the ticklish spots on his ribs, and it’s the first time anyone has ever smiled at her touch.

He slides his hands across her body and whispers _here?_ or _do you like this?_ or _can you show me?_ and she doesn’t even know how to answer because it’s the first time anyone has ever asked her. It’s like she’s learning herself at the same time she learns him; she’s as surprised as he seems to be when he discovers that perfect spot on her inner thigh and her hips jerk violently against him, they both startle at the groan that tears out of him when she scratches her nails down his spine.

The sound ignites the last of Jyn’s patience; she fists his hair with one hand and forces him to meet her eyes. His gaze locks with hers and she sees the moment he registers her other hand reaching down between them. She realizes with a sudden spike of embarrassment and nerves that her hands are trembling, and her legs are shaking even worse, but he must see it in her eyes because he suddenly flicks his tongue nervously along his lips and gives her a faint, unsteady smile. _Me too_ , his eyes tell her, and the hackles that she instinctively raised relax enough for her mind to shift back to the pounding in her blood and the growing ache in her body.

“Are you sure?” Cassian asks, and though his voice is rough and his muscles are hard with tension, his eyes are… _kind_ , she thinks. Another first, one that makes her breath catch, and it wipes away any lingering uncertainty.

“Yes,” she says, and guides him home.

The storm outside fades and vanishes, and the uncaring galaxy goes with it; the whole of existence is bound within the dingy walls of this small, dim room, she and Cassian are all that lives and breathes and moves through the silence. He whispers her name only once more, her real name, because she gave it to him years ago before she ever understood the significance of it, and the room – the universe – spins around the sound of her name on his tongue.

When her vision clears again and the world outside seeps back into reality around them, Jyn catches a glimpse of the battered chrono by the door over his shoulder (he’s stretched out between her and the door, on his side watching her with half-closed eyes). Mentally, she counts out the time until they have to strap their weapons and their masks back on and rejoin the world that rumbles and growls and exists outside the safe house. A little more than eighteen hours. A little less than the lifetime she suddenly wants.

Cassian shoves a hand through his disheveled hair, pushing it out of his eyes, and Jyn snaps her focus back to his face. His breathing is still too fast and harsh but steadying as she watches, and she finds her own evening out to match. “Alright?” he asks a little cautiously, though the corners of his mouth curl up softly.

In answer, she throws her leg over his thigh and watches his face warily, ready to pull away if he flinches. To her surprise, he simply shifts a little closer and reaches up to tangle his hands with hers on the mattress between them. His eyes are still half-closed, and his fingers trace idle patterns across her palms and over her scarred knuckles. Outside, the rain still drums relentlessly but the thunder has begun to drift further away, a rumble rather than a roar. The air is warm and thick around them, the quiet broken only by their breathing.

“I’ve never seen your hands,” he muses. “You always wore gloves, even the first time.” He traces a thick scar across two of her right knuckles, the one she got from a drug dealer with a broken bottle two years ago. “I know where you got this,” he continues, his mouth thinning and his eyebrows drawing down into a frown. “But I’ve never seen it.”

For a brief moment, Jyn almost regrets telling him about the cantina crawl, or the Rodian who had tried to hook her into the spice trade and then tried to kill her when she refused to be one of his junkies. Impulsively, she pulls her scarred hand free from his and brushes her thumb over the worry line on his forehead. “There’s a lot of me you’ve never seen before,” she teases.

He relaxes under her touch, chuckling, then catches her hand and kisses the old, jagged scar. “True enough.”

“’Course, I was pretty young most of those times,” Jyn purses her lips and flicks one finger against his palm. “So you shouldn’t have wanted to.”

Cassian rolls his eyes. “You say that like I wasn’t young, too.”

“You’re older than me,” she arches an eyebrow. “You were already trying to grow a beard when I was still just a sweet little girl in her school uniform.”

“Trying?” He glares at her, albeit without any heat, over their hands. “And you stole that uniform.”

She smirks. “Still, lusting for a school girl. A bit pervy of you, droid boy.”

To her delight, he hooks his leg behind the knee she had flung over him and pulls, dragging her closer, still scowling with mock ferocity. “Again, you were not a sweet little school girl, I wasn’t that much older than you, and _trying?_ ”

Jyn gives him a sharp, knowing grin. “Not going to argue the lusting bit, I see.”

“Is there anything I could say in my defense that wouldn’t make it worse?”

She shrugs carelessly, still grinning. “Probably not.”

He snorts, and kisses the back of her hand again, and they drop into easy silence. He actually does look a lot older than he should, Jyn thinks frivolously, cataloguing the tired creases around his eyes and the harsh lines of features worn sharp by stress and danger. They both probably do, to be honest. At the moment, though, with the faint traces of a smile still curving his lips and his fingers playing idly with hers, he almost looks his age.

“This isn’t my life,” Cassian says abruptly, his voice low but still loud in the soft silence. His eyes stay on her hands, like he doesn’t dare look away, or look up at her.

Jyn studies their linked hands, and then nods slowly. “I’ve stolen it,” she agrees in the same hushed tone of a confession, or a promise.

Now he does look up, and Jyn lifts her own gaze to meet him. His dark eyes should have been hard to read in the dim light of the room, but Jyn knows the shape of his shadows almost as well she knows her own. There’s an old, familiar fear in his eyes, and a terrible rage, a little longing and an endless exhaustion, and - when he looks at her the way he did out in the kitchen, the way he’s looking now - a faint spark of hope.

Jyn lies tangled around a man she’s barely met and yet knows like the beat of her own heart, and wonders what it would be like to look at him like this every day. She has eighteen hours to try and guess. They get up and pull the ill-fitting clothes back on and eat more of her food stash, and she wonders what it would be like to watch him cook with something other than freeze-dried insta-food and nutrient packs. Seventeen hours left. She insists on watching one of his baking show episodes, and ends up getting so invested in the competition that she rises to her knees and shouts at the judge disparaging her favorite contestant’s cupcakes. Cassian pulls her back down and laughs against the nape of her neck as she spits insults at the projection, and Jyn wonders what it would be like to feel his arms around her whenever she wanted. Fifteen hours. They fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and thin blankets and warm breath, and Jyn wakes him up with roaming hands and a hungry mouth that he matches with equal enthusiasm. Ten hours. She gives him the secondary blaster and tries not to look too stunned (or jealous) when he uses a few spares bits of wire to realign the firing mechanism and squeeze an extra five meters worth of range from it. Seven hours. The little shower in her ‘fresher has terrible water pressure and hardly any room, but she splashes water in his face and laughs at his expression (then rolls her eyes when he draws a rough sketch of a cupcake in the foam on her belly). Five hours.

It isn’t their life, it’s something they’ve stolen, something they both know they can’t keep. Jyn catches him glancing at the chrono, knows he sees her checking it too, but neither says a word about it. He kisses her as he passes on his way back to the kitchen, she perches on the counter next to him and critiques his actions like one of the judges on his show. Three hours. She pulls him between her knees (pleased to discover that the counter makes her exactly the right height) and kisses him breathless until he forgets about washing the dishes – she’s leaving them behind anyway. Two hours. He teaches her three new insults in Alderaanian, she invents five more in Huttese, just for him. An hour and a half. He finds the faint scar from that job that broke her arm a year ago, and finally coaxes the whole story from her, the parts that she couldn’t tell him over the holo. One hour. She never mentions the Imperials, or his torn uniform that he burned in the shower when it was dry enough to catch. He never explains the blood. She never asks.

They laugh, and they talk, and they touch, and for just a little while, this is their life.

And then it’s time to go.

Jyn pulls on her mostly-dry clothes and fits her holsters and knives all back into their proper place. Cassian secures her blaster inside his Imperial boots, the only part of the uniform he keeps. They don’t speak, in the last few minutes that they are safe inside the basement flat, and even the rain has stopped at last.

Just before she opens the door, Cassian takes her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist, his eyes closed and his breathing just a touch unsteady. Jyn feels a little wobbly herself, but when he drops her hand and opens his eyes, it is the rebel spy who stands in front of her, sharp and wary. She thinks of the gangs they will have to dodge and the Imperials who will carve them both to pieces at the slightest provocation, and pulls her own rage back around herself like a coat – or a shield. He watches her straighten, and she catches a flash of pride in his face before he closes that off, too. “Good,” is all he says.

They leave.

It isn’t far to the spaceport, and the streets are busy enough despite the huge puddles and partially flooded alleys that they pass through without incident. Just another pair of good Imperial citizens, scratching out a living with their heads down and their eyes empty. The gates of the spaceport are only just coming into view when Cassian’s shoulders suddenly tighten, and under his breath he mutters, “Acknowledged. ETA ten minutes. Standby.” Jyn glances at him but works to keep her face neutral. He must have slipped his earpiece in while she was watching the open alleys, wary of gangs and ‘trooper patrols. She’s only mildly surprised to see him watching her carefully, but then he says “Prep for additional passenger,” and her heart stutters in her chest. He tilts his chin down at her, the question in his eyes, and Jyn only hesitates a moment before nodding.

Well, she was going to get off this kriffing planet anyway.

It’s relatively early in the morning when they pass into the low-security port, and hardly anyone is there. All the same, they stride in together as if they are on urgent business, both taking care to look casually bored, as if this is simply part of their everyday routine. Cassian nudges her towards the battered YT-700, an old light freighter that could easily belong to a small-time merchant in this system, sitting in the farthest landing port. Jyn brushes her fingers against his pocket just enough to check that the scandocs she made for him are still there. Her own standard docs – Mira Thorn, just for another hour or so, and then never again – are tucked in her front jacket pocket. Her backup identity, Liana Hallik, is tucked securely in her left boot, right next to her sharpest dagger. Her heart is still thumping a little too fast in her chest, but her face is calm, her weapons are close at hand, and Cassian walks coolly at her side. The two ‘troopers guarding the spaceport entrance never even glance at them.

The spark of hope in Jyn’s chest blooms into a small, fierce flame. They are going to make it. The YT-700 is ten meters away, and Cassian’s hand glances across the back of hers, warm and sure. _They are going to make it._

“Hey, Thorn,” a voice croaks from behind them, “didn’t you know that you can’t kill an Atoan with a chest shot?”

Jyn’s pulled her switchblade before the voice stops speaking – Deka, _shit,_ she forgot to doubletap the wretch in the head before they left the shop. Beside her, Cassian has whirled too, his hand hovering at the opening of his shirt, but he doesn’t dare reach in and pull out the blaster. Not with two ‘troopers just down the path by the gate. Not when they are this close to escape. From the spiteful grin on the Atoan’s face as she limps out of the shadows and into view, she knows that he won’t act until she forces it. Two more Bantha Bitches materialize from the darkness behind her, knives held low against their legs where the ‘troopers can’t see, but plainly visible to Jyn. The hair on her neck pricks and she knows that more gangsters are gathering behind – it’s a noose, and she’s walked right into it. She’s lead Cassian right into it.

“Because we’re heartless,” Deka crows, chuckling at her own joke even as the movement of her bandaged chest sends her into a fit of painful, wet hacking.

The YT-700 engine suddenly comes online. Cassian jerks his head slightly, probably in response to something on his comm. Deka’s eyes shift from Cassian to Jyn and back again, and her vicious smile grows even more teeth. “Never would have pinned Thorn for an Imperial scab,” she says almost conversationally. “But I guess that accent should have tipped us off, yeah?”

“If he’s an Imp,” one of the Banthas behind them snarls, “we can sell him back to his own kind easier than some shitty bargain with the rebs.”

“Maybe so,” Deka nods and shuffles a little farther forward. She’s pale and clearly still in pain, but the two Banthas behind her are both Twi’lek, and at least one of them Jyn recognizes as a champion in the underground rings. They could both carve Jyn and Cassian up with those butcher’s knives long before Jyn could get her blade in Deka’s eye. “Maybe so,” Deka repeats, looking at Jyn like she knows exactly what thoughts are going through her head. “But this shitheel killed Bruna, and Nadi-Shik, and Julie. For him.” She jabs a slightly shaking hand at Cassian’s chest. “So I figure, she gets to watch him die first, and then we cut her juicy bits out and make her eat them. Nobody fucks with the Forty Banthas,” Deka’s voice rises into a hoarse shout, and then women around them – maybe a dozen, give or take a gangster – laugh and catcall and circle in closer.

“Come on then,” Deka makes a lazy gesture. “Let’s go find somewhere a bit more – “ she flashes a glance at the ‘trooper’s guard station, “private.”

The left side of Deka’s head explodes with a flash of green, and before the Atoan can fall for the last time, before the Twi’lek behind her can react, Jyn spins on her heels and slams into Cassian, hooking her arm through his free hand as he lowers the blaster. He comes willingly, spinning in her grip and sprinting towards the light freighter that has come to rescue them. It’s not fast enough, though, because the women around them erupt in a riot of furious shrieks and the scrape of dozens of knives coming free. A yellow blaster bolt erupts against the wall over Jyn’s head as one of them pulls out a rifle and takes (poor) aim.

A slender green Carthasian skitters towards them on the left, but Jyn lashes out and slices through one huge red eye. The woman screams and spins away, flailing wildly with her sharp claws and scoring another Bantha across the shoulder. Cassian fires to the right, and something heavy crashes to the ground. A Human lunges at them both with heavy dao swords raised, and Jyn launches herself at the woman’s throat, hitting her square in the chest with her full weight before the swordswoman can bring the blades up. Her red blood sprays in a hot line across Jyn’s face as she slashes the enemy’s throat and rides the corpse down into a clatter of flesh and metal on the ground. Cassian’s hand is already clamping on her arm, dragging her to her feet as she swipes at her eyes, and her vision clears just as he throws her up into the open door of the freighter and leaps in after her, firing wildly over his shoulder. The thick yellow bolts of black market rifles and shotguns flash through the air like lightening and fill the port with acrid grey smoke, and for a brief moment Jyn thinks of the storm that saved them before. This storm, however, is not on their side. She takes cover on one side of the freighter door and pulls her blaster from her boot, firing blindly into the chaos outside, Cassian already stationed on the other side of the door.

“Kay, go, _go!_ ” Cassian is bellowing, but whatever the pilot says (droid, their tall friend, good with the double blind hook but terrible with the mirror code trick, she hasn’t seen him in years but she knows exactly who is in the cockpit right now), it makes Cassian’s face blanch and his eyes go wild.

“What is it?” Jyn shouts across the noise, leaning out to fire a quick series of shots at the nearest shadowy shape in the smoke.

“The landing pad has us locked,” he shouts back, taking two shots so fast she barely sees him look before two more shadowy figured drop to the ground and vanish in the hazy air. “The auto-system won’t let a droid activate the emergency override.”

“Then get up there and get us unlocked!”

He hesitates, looking at her across the meter or so of blaster-filled space between them, then he snaps a nod and scrambles to his feet, yanking his comm from his ear and throwing it to her. He waits only long enough for her to snatch it from the air and jam it into her own ear, then he lunges for the front of the freighter. Cassian disappears through the cockpit hatch and for a brief, stupid moment, Jyn feels the razor blade of fear that had been so brittle before, back now and slicing vengefully into her heart. “You are late,” a mechanical voice says in her ear, then cuts off at the muffled crack of Cassian’s voice filtering through the droid’s comm. The imagined pain in her heart radiates out and pricks at her skin and –

\- no, wait, fuck, that isn’t her imagination something is latching on to her arm and dragging her –

\- red bolts flying through the air and a distant scream, someone heavy and snarling on her chest, a Bantha Bitch Twi’lek carving at her face with the terrible butcher’s knife –

\- Jyn’s hand is pinned against the dirt outside the shuttle, her lungs crushed, she kicks wildly up but can’t throw the fierce, screaming woman off –

\- a red bolt takes the Twi’lek through the chest, and she crashes down on top of Jyn with a death rattle –

\- _red bolts_ –

“-perial port authority appears to have arrived _,”_ Kay says in her ear, and then Cassian’s voice, harsh and a little frantic, “I’m closing the cargo bay doors, Jyn, stand clear, stand clear!”

 _I’m not onboard_ , she opens her mouth to scream, shoving at the dead Twi’lek, _Cassian, wait, I’m not_ –

“Another one over here, sir!” a mechanical voice buzzes, and the throbbing of Jyn’s heart dissolves into the throbbing of booted feet pounding. _Red bolts_ , she thinks, _Imperial bolts_.

“Somebody lock that freighter down,” another ‘trooper snaps from somewhere in the smoke, and Jyn summons everything she has within her to throw the Twi’lek corpse off.

“Cassian,” she gasps, “I’m clear. _Go._ ”

“Closing doors,” he replies, but Jyn doesn’t have time to watch the cargo door of the YT-700 craning slowly closed. She’s already on her feet and diving through the haze, blaster in one hand, truncheon in the other. The first ‘trooper materializes in front of her, and he startles back at her sudden appearance. Jyn doesn’t hesitate; she shoots him through the heart (not an Atoan, he’s dead before he hits the ground, but she shoots his head in passing anyway). The second ‘trooper has just enough time to get his rifle up before she kills him with a hard strike to his throat. The freighter engine whines behind her, the distinct sound of lift-off thrusters drowning out every other sound except one –

“Standby for hyperspace jump,” Cassian’s voice is strained but under control. “Jyn, are you okay?”

Another ‘trooper on her right – no, three, and all of them looking at the freighter, reaching for their comms and tracking it through the sky. “Call for TIE support,” one of them buzzes, and Jyn raises her truncheon.

“Go,” she says, and then she rips the comm from her ear and stomps it hard into the dirt. The Imps will never be able to trace it’s signal now.

The roar of the YT-700 engine is already fading as Jyn slams into the ‘troopers like an enraged rancor. She takes out two of them almost easily, but the third gets a distress call before she kills him, and four more are already converging on her before she can turn and fire her blaster.

“Stun her,” a mechanical voice orders. “I want at least one of these Bantha Bitches alive!” She hears the whine of a stunbolt a moment before the lightening comes ripping from the smoke and slams into her belly.

The last thing Jyn sees before the pain rips her mind to pieces and plunges her into the darkness is the clear sky overhead, and the brilliant flash of a small ship jumping to hyperspace inside the atmosphere of the planet.

 

\--

 

_“Scandocs indicated prisoner is Thorn, Mira, mechanic, twenty-four years old. No gang affiliation known.”_

_“Well, that’s interesting, corporal. The scandocs in her boot indicate that she is, in fact, Hallik, Liana, merchant, twenty years old.”_

_“In her boot, sir?”_

_“Yes, where a competent and thorough search could easily find them.”_

_“…yes, sir.”_

_“I’m going to go on a limb here, corporal, and assume that you have already entered ‘Mira Thorn’ into the system?”_

_“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll update the records, sir.”_

_“Don’t bother, it takes ages for the system to update these days. It’s faster to simply mark the first one ‘dead upon arrival’ and set up a new entry for the proper identity.”_

_“Yes, sir. I’ll get that taken care of right away. Will this subject be marked for interrogation?”_

_“Please, corporal. “Merchant” is just the local clang for “smuggler,” and any smuggler working with low-end petty thieves like the Forty Banthas is not worth the time and paperwork of an interrogation. Throw her with the Wobani crowd and let’s be done with her.”_

_“Yes, sir. Apologies for the inconvenience, sir.”_

_“Yes, yes, corporal, but in the future, practice a bit more due diligence.”_

_“Copy that, sir. Will do.”_


	8. Interlude - Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Roam on, my love_  
>  _down life’s long road_  
>  _we will be lost_  
>  _and found_  
>  _a thousand times_  
>  _before_  
>  _we meet again._  
>  •atticus

Encryption Key: *********

Key Accepted

Decoding…

INBOX: 34 New

 

From: Am

To: Isamu

Subj: major incoming data packet!

Isamu! We got a new data packet from an operative just coming back from deep cover, and hopping hawskas it is amazing! So. Much. Data! Supply lines, trade negotiations, high ranking memos, and about 20 new “off the book regulations” that got passed down [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~in the~~ ~~Meridian and Arkanis sectors oops probably shouldn’t type that out in unclass netmail~~ [/log] to local Imperial authorities. Most of it came from [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~Grendree~~ [/log] some high ranker’s archives, and it’s amazing! We think we can even link some of to the shift in media focus and some reports of piracy/gang activity in the area. Look, Isamu, I know you’re moving over to be a comm stream monitor or whatever because we’re so short on people, but you’re really really really going to want to come back to The Tank and sort through some of this stuff. We’re planning a Dungeon Raid down in the secure spaces tonight to work on a full layout and maybe make a spread board. Shiraan’i is bringing snacks!

Oh and speaking of Dungeon Raids, we got permission to use some server time during the night shift hours to play Worlds of Warriors, and Lheeroy says he has a strategy for fighting the Mynock of Mourning. If his strategy is just “hit it really hard until it dies” again, I’m going to strangle him. You in?

\- Am

 

\--

 

[run://hand_of_glory.exe]

[ _running…_ ]

[ _secondary encryption key required_ ]

[ _embedded message [if opened by K2SO = 1]: hey_k_bet_you_cant_crack_this_in_2_hours_ ]

[enter passkey: ****************************]

[enter passkey: ***s*e*l*ik**n*n*in*s**s*o*e]

[enter passkey: y**s*ell*ik**n*ngin*s*ss*ole]

[enter passkey: yousmelllikeanenginesasshole]

[ _passkey accepted_ ]

[ _embedded message [if time to open < 2 hours]: nice_but_next_time_do_it_in_1_]

[run://hand_of_glory.exe]

[ _running_ …]

[ _hand_of_glory.exe activated_ ]

[ _select target_ ]

[target = Imperial News Media Inc / archives / LY3275]

[search terms = spaceport, Forty, Banthas, shoot out, custody]

[search types = holo-footage, arrest reports]

[ _running_ …]

[ _target found_ ]

[ _specialreports_gangviolence.archive_ ]

[download specialreports_gangviolence.archive]

[ _downloading_ …]

[forward file = Andor, C]

[ _forwarding_ …]

[ _file sent_ ]

[end://hand_of_glory.exe]

 

\--

[Internal Message Server YAV2654 Log] [Keystroke Override Activated]

 

Bey [1633]: Welcome back!

Bey [1636]: You want to catch up? It’s Mandalorian Rice in the galley tonight.

Bey [1655]: Let me know when you get this.

 

Bey [1737]: Hey, get my message? Evening meal’s almost over.

 

Bey [1926]: Hey, I know you’re there, Cassian. Kes saw you come in yesterday and I know for a fact you’re not on duty for a week after long term missions.

 

Bey [2001]: I’m not going to go away. This base isn’t that big, Andor, I can track you down.

Andor [2013]: Apologies, Shara. I’ve been busy with my debrief.

Bey [2014]: The Prodigal Son Returns! Knew we’d find you sooner or later.

Andor [2014]: I’ve been busy.

Bey [2016]: So you’re coming down to the galley, right? Meal’s over but there’s still pudding out, because they always make too much pudding.

Bey [2017]: And booze, although don’t rat us out on that one, Captain.

Andor [2017]: Thank you, but I really don’t have time.

Bey [2021]: [PROFANITY FILTER], sure you do. No missions for a week after deep cover. I know the drill.

Andor [2022]: That rule is in place because those missions require debriefs that take a long time.

Bey [2025]: Are you debriefing right this second?

Andor [2025]: No, reviewing footage.

Bey [2029]: Just come down for an hour, okay? Eat some pudding. Talk to people who aren’t one slip of the tongue away from executing you.

Andor [unsent]: ~~How do you know they wouldn~~

Andor [2034]: You really know how to sell it to a guy, don’t you?

Bey [2036]: That remains to be seen. Get your [PROFANITY FILTER] down here, Cassian.

Bey [2027]: Seriously, [PROFANITY FILTER]? They filtered [PROFANITY FILTER]? It’s not even a dirty word!

Andor [2028]: You can make any word a dirty word.

Bey [2028]: It’s a gift.

Bey [2029]: So you’re coming, right?

Andor [unsent]: ~~I can’t stop looking until I’m sure tha~~

Andor [2032]: Maybe. I’m working my way through a big archive. If I can’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll need that pudding to console me.

Bey [2033]: Well, move fast because Kes loves this stuff and he’s not in the habit of saving you any after all these months.

 

\--

 

[open = specialreports_gangviolence.archive]

[^top]

shootout_rebels_carida.vid

mass_shooting_coruscant.vid

gang_violence_uyter.vid

gang_shootout_40banthas.vid **< <<**

gang_shooting_shantipole.vid

[continue scrolling]

 

[play = gang_shootout_40banthas.vid]

“- authorities have released this exclusive footage to Special Report with Horace and Kelli, this exclusive footage, folks, of the violent shootout that took place today between members of notorious gangsters The Forty Banthas and Imperial Port Authorities. We would like to warn our loyal viewers that the following footage can be extremely graphic.”

“You can see there, Kelli, three gangsters engaging with the ‘troopers. Press Releases from authorities name these individuals, all deceased, as Susan Tuliera, Jeniifer Youriv, and the non-human is…Picker Shorbo.”

“I think its pronounced Pie’ckre Shurehbo, Horace.”

“Well, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Certainly not a local girl. I tell you, Kelli, this kind of violence is really building in the sector. Citizens have been calling for the local Moff to reinforce peacekeepers with Imperial troops and watching this, you can really see why.”

“Now, I understand that the Forty Banthas are an all-female gang, Horace?”

“That is correct. But I see what you're looking at - that appears to be a male, running behind that part of the firefight, doesn’t it?”

“Well, with only the back of the head to look at, I think it’s a bit tough. Perhaps it’s just a very masculine girl.”

“They are criminals, Kelli. Makes sense that some of them could be pretty ugly, doesn’t it?”

“Haha, yes, of course. And so many of them are non-human, too, have you noticed? That might not even be a human woman. Although the other one, holding her – or his? – hand, however, is definitely female.”

“You don’t see gangsters doing much hand holding, do you, Kelli? Haha, it’s almost romantic.”

“Very romantic, Horace. Gansters in love, haha. Ooh, there’s one of those graphic moments, viewers.”

“Look at that, one of the criminals appears to have a heavy weapon of some kind. Quite an impressive model, but what a lot of property damage that’s doing. No wonder insurance premiums are so high in the sector.”

“I believe that’s called a repeater-cannon, Horace.”

“It might be, Kelli, it might be, but I think it’s more some kind of belt-fed semi-automatic large-scale blaster.”

“Right, right. Of course, Horace.”

“Let’s go ahead and freeze the footage on that freighter. This ship departed the space port during the firefight, and Imperial Port Authority asks that any citizens with information regarding this freighter please come forward to their local checkpoint.”

“Now this is interesting, Horace, look. Two of the gangsters seem to be fighting amongst themselves. The green one dragged that woman right out of the freighter.”

[pause]

[rewind]

"- fighting amongst themselves. The green one dragged that woman right out of the freighter.”

“Yes, that Twi’lek appears to be trying to stab the Human woman with, my goodness, a rather large blade, isn’t it?”

“The smoke really is making it very difficult to see. This is likely why reports of this event have been so limited, Horace. Of course, Imperial Port Authorities are working with local news to keep the public informed.”

“Of course. I'm being told now that Imperial authorities have not yet released the name of the Twi’lek on the screen, but we will update our holonet site at special report dot Horace and Kelli dot holonet backslash forty banthas as soon as we know, folks.”

“Alright, and here’s the final graphic moment, viewers, you can see the incoming peacekeepers – and stop me if I’m wrong, Horace, but I think this is the same girl from the in-fighting we were just watching, right?”

“Right, that’s her, Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graphic shot, wasn't it. Right in the chest - "

[pause]

[rewind]

“ - Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graphic –“

[pause]

 

\--

[IMPSERV_ MYKAPO_RESTRICTED ACCESS_LOG #7334J601U]

After-Action Report / LY3275 / SUBJECTS IN IMPERIAL CUSTODY

 

[^jump to top of list]

Daylana Dio Rosto [Fem / Human / Injuries [select to view] / Life Imprisonment / Wobani]

Kaya Bujold [Fem / Non Human / Dead / Remains Destroyed]

Liana Hallik [Fem / Human / Injuries [select to view] / Life Imprisonment / Wobani]

Catri Finn [Fem / Human / Dead / Remains Destroyed]

Lar Nestina [Fem / Non Human / Injuries [select to view] / Execution]

Vinjera [Fem / Non Human / Dead / Remains Destroyed]

Mira Thorn [Fem / Human / Dead / Remains Destroyed] **< <<**

Sia Hooge [Fem / Non Human / Injuries [select to view] / Execution]

[continue scrolling...]

 

\--

 

[play = gang_shootout_40banthas.vid]

 

“ – that’s her, Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graph-"

[pause]

[rewind]

“-Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a - "

[pause]

[rewind]

“- this is where she was – oh my, that - "

[pause]

[rewind]

“- this is where she - "

[pause]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_WARNING: For security reasons, this console will be automatically logged off due to: [inactivity for 30 minutes]._

_Please select ‘continue’ to prevent automatic log off._

_Continue?_

_This console has been automatically logged off due to inactivity._

 

\--

 

[COMMSTAT775D_YAVIN_NN0735]

SEC_RATING: TOP SECRET

Encryption Key Required: ********************

Authorization Accepted

Please stand by…

-

Operative CJA

You have 2 unread messages

You have 1 PRIORITY message

-

PRIORITY

From: Am

To: CJA

Subj: Check in from your data analyst

Good morning sir, ma’am, or other. I understand that you are the operative now in charge of the upcoming Operation FRACTURE. I am the chief analyst for the data packet recovered during Operation FOUNDATION [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~which I am guessing you were also instrumental in securin~~ [/log] and I have some good news! We have not yet finished our full report [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~because wow there is a ton of juicy d~~ [/log] but we’ve been grinding through this packet and found some very interesting data points. It appears that massive amounts of resources have been diverted to what at first glance looks like multiple projects, but an emerging pattern suggests that those are all spam and everything is in fact headed towards one major project. We can’t even begin to guess what this thing is, but it’s really big and a lot of important Imperials are really excited about it. We’re talking Boss Levels of Bad going on here. I’ll have a full write up for you soon, but in the meantime, I can tell you that the weirdest thing we’ve found so far is multiple references to someone named ‘Galen Erso,’ who is listed in official Imperial Civilian Census Archives as “dead” since 3262LY. But we’ve found dozens of references and memos in the high-rankers’ archives to Erso, and one guy in particular who keeps writing snippy little personal letters where he calls the subject ‘my old friend’ [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~and there’s a lot of passive aggressive stuff going on in that relationship, let me tell you~~ [/log]. So whoever this Galen Erso is, they are pretty key to the plot.

I will have a follow on report soon.

Respectfully,

Am

Alliance Analysis

 

\--

[Internal Message Server YAV2654 Log] [Keystroke Override Activated]

 

Bey [1422]: Hey, missed you at morning meal again. And noon meal.

Bey [1426]: I know you’ve been busy. But you have to eat sometimes.

Bey [1451]: Have evening meal with us in the galley. We won’t talk about work, okay?

 

Bey [1520]: See you at evening meal.

 

Bey [1643]: You’re late.

 

Bey [1703]: Going to miss out on these glorious protein cubes. Better get a move on.

 

Bey [1933]: [PROFANITY FILTER], Cassian. Are you still on base?

 

\--

[play = gang_shootout_40banthas.vid]

 

“ - same woman from the in-fighting, right?”

“Right, that’s her, Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graphic shot, wasn-"

[pause]

[rewind]

“ - Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rath-"

[pause]

[rewind]

“- is where she was - "

[pause]

 

\--

 

From: Draven

To: Mothma

Subj: RE: Concerning News

Yes, we are still looking into the scientist. Have a possible opportunity to reconnect with an old ally, will update you at tomorrow morning meeting. Sending operative to investigate, and yes, the same one I mentioned before. Aware of that incident in the droid bay. Personally investigated, a rookie mech tried to wipe the KX droid as routine procedure, unaware of standing orders re: Intelligence assets. Operative did not react with professionalism. Already spoke with both the operative and the droid bay supervisor about it, discipline unnecessary, it won’t happen again. [keystroke log: deleted text] ~~Stop worrying about him, the boy’s been through rough patches before and he’s always m~~ [/log] My confidence in the operative’s abilities remains solid. Will deploy within the day.

 

\--

[Excerpt from report contained on datapad, triple encrypted, no holonet or server access enabled]

Sector Report: Thand Sector

SECTOR CHIEF: Commander Jarvis Turpi Lithar II

[Operation BECKON]

Operative: Capt Andor, Cassian

Operating alias: Jack Nicabre [select for profile]

Drop off: Rings of Kafrene

Last handshake: 2 days

Decrypted transmission log [select to read]

SUMOPS:

Operative CJA currently in contact with asset #H741 [Tivik]. Reports positive inroads to gaining asset’s trust. Asset believes that subject #002R [Saw Gerrera] has begun to mentally deteriorate, and expressed concerns about the collateral damage the Partisans are inflicting on the asset’s home city of Jedha. Asset provided intelligence taken from Partisan reconnaissance missions which indicates that the kyber from Jedha appears to be funneling to a single site. Operative informed handler of intention to follow reports of kyber shipments being staged in Arkanis sector. Operative advised to maintain working comm connection with asset #H741 in the event of updated intelligence.

Next expected handshake: 4 days

 

\--

[Internal Message Server YAV2654 Log] [Keystroke Override Activated]

 

Bey [1833]: Hey.

Bey [1837]: Antilles saw you in the hangar this morning, so I guess you’re back. Was hoping you’d check in, say hi.

Andor [1848]: Sorry. Busy. Leaving again soon.

Bey [unsent]: ~~I’m really starting to worry about you~~.

Bey [unsent]: ~~K2 mentioned you lost a contact~~.

Bey [unsent]: ~~I think K2 is a little concerned about~~

Bey [1903]: I’ve got a mission coming up soon, I think. Let’s meet up for a little bit before I head out, ok?

 

Bey [0431]: Ok, fine, I’m headed out now. Sorry I missed you. But I’m supposed to be back in a few days, and if you’re on base, I’m going to drag you by the ear to the galley or the cantina or something. So there. You are warned.

Andor [0435]: Good luck.

 

\--

[play = gang_shootout_40banthas.vid]

 

“ - woman from the in-fighting, right?”

“Right, that’s her, Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graphic - "

[pause]

[rewind]

“- this is where she - "

[pause]

 

\--

 

From: Chiiko (that kill-stealing camper jerkface!)

To: Am

Subj: RE: Please Confirm Your Analysis

Am –

Yes, I checked the weight ratios for kyber against common weapon stock, and yes, I double checked the manifests for Arkanis and Terabhe sectors, and YES I’m sure the shipments marked “Outlands Regional Security Force” are actually being shipped to “Imperial Advanced Weapons Development.” The fact that they are both companies/divisions connected to Grand Moff Tarkin is NOT my only reason for saying so, it’s just a really compelling saabe-cherry on top of the cake. Also, YES I have found viable connectors to Erso's daughter, and YES they are all pretty tiny or tangential but there are like SEVENTY of them. While we're on that subject, the facial-recognition software is still running through Imperial Archives and it's only day 5, so stop hassling me about how long it's taking to find her. There are a lot of people in the galaxy and not all of them are in Imp databases. We'll be lucky if we find her within a month. But the technique is still valid, and I know what I'm doing. So you can stop sending me those snide little update notices and confirmation requests, Am, and if you’re still mad about that round of Hallow we played last week then get over it, I used a totally valid strategy and you’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.

Don’t flip out over all the Classified terms in this thing, I used that new encryption program Intel passed around. It’s damn good. Delete this message if you’re still squicky about it.

\- Chi

 

\--

[Internal Message Server YAV2654 Log] [Keystroke Override Activated]

 

Bey [1743]: You missed evening meal with me and Kes again.

Bey [1746]: So what’s your excuse this time?

Andor [1751]: Being sent out.

Bey [1752]: Right this second? In the next half hour?

Bey [1758]: You know this isn’t healthy right?

Andor [1759]: I appreciate your concerns, but I have to prep for departure.

Bey [1801]: You can’t eat The Cause, Cassian. Can’t drink it. Can’t breathe it.

Andor [1804]: I am fine, Shara. Just busy. Big project.

Bey [1807]: There’s always a big project. This whole [PROFANITY FILTER] rebellion is a big [PROFANITY FILTER] project.

Andor [1808]: This one requires a lot of focus.

Bey [1809]: It’s been requiring a lot of focus for months.

Andor [unsent]: ~~Yes it has and I’m sorry if that’s too fucking difficult for y~~

Andor [1811]: It’s important.

Bey [1811]: Look, I’m not asking you to throw off all your responsibilities.

Bey [1812]: But you don't have to give up everything all the time. You can keep something for yourself, Cassian.

Andor [unsent]: ~~no I ca~~

Andor [1815]: Of course.

Bey [1815]: Get some food in you. Maybe watch a holostream. Muck around with droid parts. Just something that isn’t work.

Bey [1816]: And for Force sake, Cassian, come hang out with people for awhile. Any people. Even K2SO seems to miss you lately.

 

Andor [1846]: I am sorry.

Bey [1847]: Hey, we’re friends, whether you like it or not. You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.

Andor [1847]: Thank you.

Bey [1848]: Even when you’re being a total [PROFANITY FILTER].

 

\--

ALERT

PRIORITY MESSAGE

From: DD

To: CJA

Subj: Urgent

 

Rumors of large scale movement in Arkanis Sector connected to Operation FRACTURE. Time sensitive. Deploy immediately. Data packet will be waiting on your ship.

 

\--

 

[Heavily encrypted message sent to [ERROR: UNKNOWN ADDRESS] by [ERROR: UNKNOWN SENDER] on [ERROR: UNKNOWN DATE]]

friend - 

we need to meet right now its about the kyber and gerrera and its BIG please come right now NOW there is no time I’m back on kafrene but not for long

\- T

 

\--

[Excerpt from report contained on datapad, triple encrypted, no holonet or server access enabled]

Sector Report: Thand Sector

SECTOR CHIEF: Commander Jarvis Turpi Lithar II

[Operation BECKON]

Operative: Capt Andor, Cassian

Operating alias: N/A

Drop off: Rings of Kafrene

Last handshake: 0 days

Decrypted transmission log [select to read]

SUMOPS:

Operative CA received urgent message to return to Kafrene from asset #H741[Tivik]. Operative advised to RTB to pick up revised scandocs for new identity or new ship registration. Operative declined, indicated that insufficient time dictated immediate return to Kafrene. Operative advised of HIGH RISK factors. Comms preemptively severed to facilitate containment in the possible event of Operative CA's capture. Operative RU is standing by for potential Clean Up operation.

Next expected handshake: Unknown

 

\--

[play = gang_shootout_40banthas.vid]

 

“- that’s her, Mira Thorn, according to the Press Release, this is where she was – oh my, that was a rather graphic sh -“

[pause]

[rewind]

“- she was - “

[pause]

 

 

 

[COMMAND: Delete vid]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Arkanis Sector is home to [Geonosis](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Geonosis), one of the planets heavily involved in the designing and building of the Death Star (and also one of the first to be utterly destroyed in it's name, although no one knew that at the time).
> 
> The Thand sector is home to Jedha.
> 
> The hand_of_glory.exe was one of the slicing programs Jyn sent to Kay, if that was not clear. It was named for a famous [thieves' artifact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of_Glory).
> 
> How did the Alliance find Jyn under a false name in an Imperial prison? I'm gonna throw out "massive Imperial database mining with a well-written facial recognition program that eventually found a certain number of possible matches that were based on Lyra and Galen's faces...and some luck." It probably took weeks, though. 
> 
> Why did Cassian seem so jumpy on Kafrene, when he could have just shown the 'troopers some fake ID? Personal theory: Tivik's message came through while he was off somewhere else and he didn't have time to stop back at home and pick up another identity. So he was basically an undocumented immigrant on a planet full of zealous ICE agents - with the sure knowledge that if he was caught, his own people would be scrambling to put him down. No wonder he was so clipped and unsympathetic to Tivik.
> 
> I have opinions about sensationalist journalism. It leaked a little here.


	9. the voice of your eyes (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond_   
>  _any experience, your eyes have their silence:_   
>  _in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,_   
>  _or which i cannot touch because they are too near_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -
> 
> This chapter was 12k words before I figured out that I needed to split it again.

Jyn is twenty-three years old, and she is alone.

Of course, practically speaking, she is _never_ alone. There are no private cells in Wobani; Jyn spent her first three months in a six-man cell, and that ended with two dead and one maimed. So she was moved to high security (that’s a joke - there’s nothing on the planet that isn’t Imperial, associated with the prison, and deadly as all hells, so there isn’t actually a ‘low security’ area). She ends up in a two-man cell with a newly-imprisoned Keshiri who opts out one week later. Jyn’s not really surprised. The Keshiri are extremely religious, and part of their creed says that showing certain parts of their body to anyone outside of their family destroys part of their immortal soul. The more often they do it, the more parts of their souls are eaten up, until there’s nothing left and death just snuffs them out, like a candle.

It’s a dangerous doctrine to have on Wobani. Every waking moment the prisoners spend either in long chains on work details, crowded into inexplicably cramped mess halls, marched through routine medical examinations, or packed elbow-to-asshole into transports as they are carted from factory to field to whatever other job the Imps come up with. There are large, obvious cameras in the (public, stall-less) bathrooms. The sector-wardens require a weekly ‘decontamination,’ where they strip the prisoners bare and hose them down with chemical solutions to kill bacteria and bugs in a soulless, factory-style assembly line. There is never a single moment where any prisoner is ever alone.

Jyn learns to deal with it. She’s never had a shy bladder (she’d have died of urethra poisoning among the Partisans if she did), and during the decons she pulls her chin into her neck to give herself folds, slumps her shoulders, lets her hair hang lank over her snarling face, and sometimes she even affects an awkward limping gait – all of which makes her too unattractive to the watching ‘troopers for them to bother her. It’s frightening and humiliating to be so constantly exposed at first, but Jyn adapts quick enough and then it just becomes irritating.

But she’s not a Keshiri, and by Keshiri standards, Wobani is where a person is not only incarcerated, but damned, too. Most of them opt out within the first month. Jyn’s cellmate uses a bottle full of cleaning solvent that she must have smuggled out of the decontamination line. Jyn is out on work detail at the time, but she is brought back just in time to see the bored, white-clad medical staff wheeling the gurney from her cell. The Keshiri is more grey than purple by then, and bloated to a strange shape, so it takes Jyn a few seconds to recognize what she’s looking at.

Her first thought is that she might actually get a couple hours to herself before they throw in a new cell mate.

Her second thought is that the constant surveillance may not bother her much, but Wobani is probably still eating her soul.

She gets about twenty minutes of sitting in her empty cell, the ‘trooper by the door with his back to her because an interesting fight is happening a few levels away. Jyn presses her hands flat on her knees and actually closes her eyes.

It feels almost like peace.

Twenty minutes later, they shove in a being of a species that she can’t identify – probably from another race that quarreled with the Empire and now have just enough people left to regret it – and the tentacled face turns towards Jyn silently. Her new cell mate stares at Jyn like a hungry sheecas-snake, lidless eyes glossy and unreadable, but Jyn curls up her lip to expose her teeth and stares back, as unblinking as possible. “Your breathing is loud,” the new cellmate says. “It is displeasing to me.”

Jyn curls her lips back a little more, into a parody of a smile. “Your face is ugly,” she snarls back. “I’m already sick of looking at it.”

“I will listen to your unpleasant breath for a time,” the cellmate replies calmly, shuffling to the newly empty bed across the narrow cell from Jyn. “And then I will snuff it out.” There is a faint outline of purple-tinged sweat on the sheets. The new cellmate doesn’t seem to notice, or care, as she stretches out on it.

“I’ll look at your ugly maw for now,” Jyn lays on her side and pointedly hides her hand under her pillow, “and then I’ll carve it off.”

They don’t speak much, after that, not for the two long months they are celled together. But Jyn keeps one hand near her throat (both to brush against the crystal that she has somehow managed to keep hidden, and to give her a quicker reaction if anything reaches for her neck), and the other hand under her thin pillow, and her eyes always on her cellmate. The ‘troopers stomp and chatter and bang on the bars, the cameras hum slightly as they turn to follow her every movement, and the chemicals in decon are cold and harsh on her naked skin as she shuffles slowly through the line with the other prisoners in her block.

Jyn’s constantly surrounded by people. She’s never been so alone.

Once, the very first night they threw her in the six-man cell and slammed the door, as Jyn curled in her little bunk and watched the five other prisoners through lidded eyes, just that one time, she’d thought about Cassian. She wondered if he made it back to his Alliance, if the intel he gathered on that months-long undercover operation had been worth whatever it was that had made his eyes so hollow when he burned his uniform in her shower.

Then one of her cellmates, a grubby Chadra Fan with a broken fang, had slipped off his bunk and tiptoed carefully towards her. Jyn watched him through her eyelashes and pretended to be asleep. (In her memory, Cassian rolled himself between her and the door and waited until she relaxed beneath him, his eyes dark and quiet and patient.) The Chadra Fan stepped a little closer, glancing at the harsh lights of the hallway outside the bars. (Cassian kissed the back of her hand, and they were silent save for their easy breathing and the muted beat of her heart.) The grit on the cell floor scratched softly as the Chadra Fan eased to the side of Jyn’s bunk, his breathing light and quick as any rat.

Jyn carefully folded up every memory she had of Cassian and sent them into the cave in her mind, down in the dark with _she is my best and truest soldier_ and _trust the Force, Jyn_ and _my Stardust_.

When the Chadra Fan’s sharp little claws reached for her hair, Jyn broke his wrist, then his elbow, and ripped that broken fang from his jaw. The ‘troopers had to hit her with the stun baton twice before she’d relinquished the fang, and after that the Chadra Fan had flinched every time she looked at him, until he got caught up in some riot down in Waste processing, and opted out of Wobani by charging straight at the ‘troopers who came down to deal with it.

Jyn doesn’t think about Cassian again, after that first night. He doesn’t belong in this place, and she’d rather be alone than drag him into it. So she doesn’t think about him, ever, not even in her restless dreams. She’s got good mental discipline, Saw at least gave her that, however else he failed her. So it’s almost easy to catch every tiny flicker of memory that a randomly-encountered pair of dark eyes or a nearby quiet voice or even a semi-warm bowl of stew in the prisoner’s galley occasionally conjures up. Jyn is a survivor, she’s well-trained, and she protects what she loves, so she doesn’t think about Cassian in Wobani.

Until one day, six months after that first night, she does.

It’s the grenade (an off-the-shelf sticky grenade, like the kind that the Partisans used to make) that rattles open the door to her mental cave and lets a brief memory of Cassian slip out. The transport that her work detail is in shudders under the force of the grenade’s detonation, and Jyn instinctively ducks her head and throws her arms up and ( _she desperately tries to throw her arms over his head, but she’s hampered by the fact that he’s clutching her to his chest and curling his body over her in an attempt to shield her from the shrapnel –)_

The transport grinds to a halt and the cold Wobani wind slices into the cramped interior, cutting through Jyn’s thin clothes and dragging her greasy hair into her eyes. In the second it takes her to shake it away, sentients in slightly grubby, definitely non-standard gear have burst into the transport and killed both ‘troopers with brutal efficiency. The leader is a Human male, just as grubby and un-Imperial as his gear. He sweeps a look around the ruined transport with his jaw set grimly, holding his weapon at the ready, never turning his back on the downed ‘troopers. “Liana Hallik,” he snaps at the nearest prisoner, who just happens to be Jyn’s squid-faced cellmate. Squid-face stares at him with eyes as blank and deadly as a shark, and the leader is either too impatient to play her game or smart enough to know he’ll get nothing from that quarter unless he’s willing to bargain dearly for it. He veers away from her almost instantly, eyes searching through the Human prisoners.

 _Partisans_ , Jyn’s mind whispers, watching the guerilla leader carefully point his blaster barrel at the ‘trooper nearest his leg while he steps further into the transport. That was Saw’s doctrine, never assume the enemy is neutralized unless you can see the death in his eyes. _Saw._ And though she hates herself a little for it, something in her chest flickers, tiny and fragile and warm.

“Liana Hallik,” the leader growls again, his eyes narrowing. Behind him, a Kaminoan in more or less the same gear puts an extra blaster shot into one of the ‘trooper’s heads. The prisoner nearest the leader raises his thick, manacled hands and points at Jyn. The leader turns to stare at her, his eyes assessing and unfriendly. His blaster stays steady on the second ‘trooper, but his gaze flicks up and down her hunched body and his lips thin. She’s not what he expected, apparently, and he’s not well pleased with what he sees. Perhaps Saw told him she was bigger, or fiercer, or at least not so filthy and starved.

The flicker of warmth in Jyn’s chest is swallowed suddenly by the flare of rage that surges up to consume it. Now? _Now_ Saw comes for her? No, _worse_ , he sends this judgmental sack of shit to _rescue_ her, because he probably wants something from her and yet can’t be bothered to come himself.

Well. To all the many frothing hells with _that_.

The leader waits a beat longer until the Kaminoan shoots the second ‘trooper in the head, then he points his blaster at the deck and looms over Jyn’s seat on the transport. His stance is tense, but focused on the blown door behind him. He’s looking at her, but clearly he only anticipates a threat in the opposite direction. He jerks his chin slightly at her wrists. “You want out of those?”

Jyn dips her chin, watches through her eyelashes as he leans forward and slides the ‘trooper’s key into the manacles. Slowly, Jyn winds her fingers around the heavy chain in between her wrists, her grip solid.

“Hey, what about me?” One of the other prisoners leans forward, holding out his wrists pleadingly, and the leader glances back at him. It’s only a micro movement, really, an instinctive reaction to the movement and sound, but it’s all Jyn needs. She lashes out with her heels, smashing the Partisan leader in the gut and knocking him back with a pained grunt. The Kaminoan lunges at her, but Jyn is on her feet and swinging the manacles by their chain, catching him in the neck and sending him wheezing to the floor. Another Human comes through the smoke to grab her wrists, but Jyn twists, wrapping the chain around the attacker’s fingers and forcing a scream of pain as she cracks at least two of them. The Human flails away, and Jyn lunges those last few desperate steps for the door (they must have come in a transport of their own, it’s probably sitting right out there, still running, ready for a quick departure).

But the leader is too quick to recover, he surges up from behind and gets his hands around her elbows, dragging her back. Wobani has worn Jyn into brittle edges and sharp points, but she is a child of war and she is not so easily subdued. Moving purely on instinct, she throws herself hard forward against his grip and then immediately hard backward, throwing him off balance and slamming her elbows back into his sternum. He’s wearing body armor, but the force of it, and the fact that he’s already off-center from her movement, makes him stumble and lose his grip. There’s a shovel on the wall, and it’s in Jyn’s hand almost before her brain has finished registering it. She turns, translating the pivot of her hips to sheer force in the swing, and slams the durasteel shovel blade into the Partisan leader’s face. There isn’t a lot of room in the transport, so the swing is a little truncated, but it sends him crashing to the ground anyway.

Jyn drops the shovel, turns on her heel, and _runs_.

She’s out the transport in three flying steps, her feet pound against the frozen grey Wobani earth for two more –

\- and then something cold and hard grabs her by the neck. The world tilts and falls out from under her feet, she catches a glimpse of her own hands flying up to clutch at – something – and then a grav-bus slams into her spine and her vision whites out as all the air in the world vanishes.

 _Get up!_ Saw bellows in her head. _Get up! Death takes the slow and the bewildered! Move!_

Something tall and dark looms over her. Not the Partisan. Black, sharp angles, hard lines, glowing eyes. Droid.

Imperial security droid.

“Congratulations,” the droid says in a clipped, unimpressed tone. “You are being rescued.”

Jyn wheezes, glaring, her hands scrabbling at the cold dirt as she tries to make sense of her new orientation. On her back, she’s on her back on the dirt, that’s the sky above her. Air is reluctantly trickling back into her starved lungs, and her spine is aching, but if she can just –

The droid’s optics telescope suddenly, there’s an odd whir, and then he says, “Interesting. You are alive.”

“Not if she pulls something like that again,” a Human voice snarls just above Jyn’s head. “Pick her up, then. Imps are on the way.”

“I will now escort you to the rescue craft,” the droid replies, looking down at Jyn. He leans forward, his metal hand reaching for her arm. Jyn debates rolling away, but she’s still gasping and frankly, there’s nowhere to go. “Please do not resist,” the droid adds, and lifts her to her feet.

Their transport is only a few paces away (damn, she’d been so _close_ ), and the Partisans - who have apparently subverted an Imperial droid, somehow - hustle her into it and lift off within two minutes. She hears someone in the cockpit make a tense remark about possible TIE reinforcements, but then the transport shudders and Jyn feels the faint pulling sensation in her belly as it jumps to lightspeed.

“Alright,” the leader says, standing up and grabbing a pair of heavy manacles from his belt – her manacles, she notes, the Imperial crest still stamped onto the sides. “Since you’re not interested in being friends,” he says, holding the manacles up and meeting her eye with a glare. The left side of his face is already swelling an ugly purple, and the Kaminoan beside him is glowering at Jyn as they rub their throat.

Jyn’s wrists are raw and red under her sleeves. Every muscle in her body wants to flinch as the Partisan steps cautiously closer, but she clamps down on the impulse and narrows her eyes, lowering her chin and pulling her lips back just slightly. He sees the barest hint of her teeth and pauses. He glances up at the droid, who is still holding Jyn’s upper arm in an uncompromising grip. “Right,” he says sharply, and flings the manacles across the small space to the droid. “Put those on her.”

He turns his back and stomps towards the cockpit. The other Partisans shift and look away, although the Human whose fingers she probably broke shoots her one last glare. Jyn lets her face go blank, and stares back, unblinking, until he shrugs irritably and drops his gaze.

“There is only a three percent chance that you will succeed in any attempt to commandeer this vessel and fly to a place of your choosing,” the droid interrupts Jyn’s thoughts. He raises her arm (she makes a token effort to resist, but not much. There’s not much her underfed, overworked muscles can do against durasteel bones and weapon-grade servos), and clamps the first manacle around her wrist. It’s…a little looser than she expected, actually. Not enough to slip free, but it doesn’t grate down on her already raw skin.

“Of course, your odds would increase to seventeen percent, were I to aid you in this endeavor.”

Jyn’s eyes snap up to the droid as he pulls her other wrist over and snaps her neatly into it, again tight enough to be secure, but loose enough to be kind. It takes her a minute, because she hasn’t spoken much in the last six months and not at all in the last week or so, but she finds her voice and says hoarsely, “Why would you do that?”

The droid’s optics widen and narrow in focus. “I would not,” he said bluntly. “I do not approve of your continued bondage, but my loyalty is to the Alliance, not your personal freedom.”

Jyn glances at the Imperial crest painted in bold white in the droid’s shoulder, a sharp retort on her lips, then the words register properly in her head and instead she repeats dumbly, “Alliance.”

“Yes. You have been rescued by Alliance forces,” the droid informs her. “Oh. You are surprised by this information.”

Jyn _is_ surprised, but she hurries to wipe it from her face. However, she can’t resist asking, “What does the Alliance want with me?”

“Oy, droid, shut it,” one of the Parti- one of the Alliance rebels snaps. “You’re supposed to be an intelligence asset, right? You’d think they’d program you to keep your voicebox switched off.”

Jyn feels a little flare of annoyance at the rebel, although she’s not entirely sure why. The droid does not respond for several long seconds, and then he says, “I have updated your personal profile.”

Jyn blinks at him, because she has no idea what he’s talking about, but it’s the first conversation she’s had in months that didn’t hinge on threats, and frankly, trying to figure out what he means is better than panicking because she’s trapped _again_ , different uniforms, same manacles. And it’s worse this time, because in Wobani she was no one, nothing of interest to anybody, but these people came looking for _her_ and –

“What does it say?” She says abruptly, swallowing back the bile in her throat. “My profile.”

“I have updated the status of your health,” the droid answers readily, ignoring the exasperated muttering of the rebel who had chastised him before. “And erased the record of the unpleasant appellations I assigned you.”

Jyn blinks again, because _what?_

“I have determined that your departure from our freighter was unintentional, and your failure to communicate afterwards was a direct result of your incarceration.”

_What?_

The droid whirrs slightly. “I have therefore,” he says with great gravitas, “forgiven you.” And then he emits a series of sharp beeps that for a brief moment she thinks are Binary, but if they are, it’s just a nonsense string of code, familiar code, though, so what – with a jolt, Jyn suddenly recognizes the beeps as her own code, a part of one of her favorite slicing programs. She wrote that shit herself, years ago, and now that she recognizes it, her brain translates it automatically. _Hello, Mira Thorn_.

The name cuts across her skin so sharp and fast that she almost doesn’t feel it, at first, and then her mind catches up and Jyn jerks her head away from the rebels further up in the transport. None of them appear to be looking at her, but she’s not about to risk it. “Kay,” she says, softly. Then, a touch sharply, “Forgiven me for what?”

K2SO’s optics refocus again. “Originally, we believed that you had, _once again_ ,” his voicebox becomes curiously flat and mechanical on those two words, then returns to the slightly fussy tone that the Imperial programmers so loved in their murder-bots, “chosen to abandon us to pursue your own goals.”

 _Us._ Jyn’s belly clenches suddenly. _Cassian_. And the whole abandonment thing…Scipio, she thinks with a faint pang, like on Scipio. Did Cassian think that she had… _fuck_. Of course he probably did. She’d run out on him before, and she’d clearly lied when she told him she was onboard. Of course he thought she’d abandoned him again, of _course_.

“My forgiveness, however,” Kay continues, oblivious to the way Jyn’s shoulders hunch and her eyes slide closed, “is for the lie you told on the comm, when you were clearly not onboard. Considering that evidence suggested you were k- ”

“Fire and Force, droid!” The complaining rebel exclaims, “Are you still blabbing to her? This is a _classified_ operation. Switch off, already!” He turns to the person seated next to him and says, loudly, “Can’t believe they even sent this bolt bucket. We should have just waited for the spook to get back.”

The other rebel shrugs. “Probably on a time crunch. We usually are.”

Kay falls silent, but when Jyn glances up at him, his optics are steady on her. “Did you ever crack the Hand of Glory in under an hour?” Jyn asks slowly, softly, barely more than a whisper.

Wordlessly, he inclines his black metal head at her. Jyn’s mouth ticks up at the corner, then drops back into the wary mask she has worn for months, the expression that makes her look too dull to be a threat but too unsettling to be a target. Kay’s optics refocus on her face, then to her surprise, the droid steps between her and the other rebels. He turns his back to the bulkhead behind her and stands silently, staring at the opposite bulkhead and making soft whirring noises from time to time. There’s a faint warmth radiating from his chassis, the heat signature of his servos and processors all bundled into his core, and Jyn allows herself to lean just slightly toward it. He’s not her friend, not really, but…he’s familiar, sort of. She doesn’t know why he’s here or what his Alliance wants from her, but she knows that he likes code with number puzzles and struggles with word riddles, gets snippy about his algorithms and refers to the baking show as ‘a poorly executed exercise in chemistry,’ which never fails to irritate Cassian.

 _Cassian._ A part of Jyn desperately wants to ask about him, find out exactly how angry he is with her, find out if he’s somehow responsible for this ‘rescue’ or if he hasn’t bothered to even look for her. She wouldn’t have looked for _him_ , if she thought he’d run out on her. For the second time.

 _Fuck_.

But the strangers in rebel gear are muttering amongst themselves, and the angry one with broken fingers keeps throwing sour glances at Kay, so she swallows back her questions and clenches her hands in her lap. They’re probably taking her to some rebel-aligned base or ship. Cassian might be there, to collect Kay, if nothing else. If she sees him again, if he’ll bother to talk to her, maybe…

The faint, fragile warmth in her chest flickers back into life, tiny and hopeful. She won’t let herself dwell on it, but she can’t quite smother it, either. So she sits next to K2SO and peers at the rebels around his chassis, and thinks _maybe._

 _Maybe_.

 

\--

 

When the rebels drag her off the ship and into the hangar of their base, her initial thought that they were Partisans suddenly seems not just wrong but ridiculously, _laughably_ wrong. She recognizes it, of course, she hasn’t been here in a decade but the humidity of the air, the faintly rotten smell of jungle, even the echoing vastness of the stone temple converted to a fighter craft hangar is all instantly familiar. Looks like the Alliance is still on Yavin IV, and they’ve even expanded their work spaces to other temples in the ruins. She can see X Wings, A Wings, and a few ancient shuttles angling for landing in the massive stone pyramid several klicks west. There are guard towers built from modern durasteel bolted to the tops of at least four ancient stone peaks. Around her, hundreds of sentients bustle from place to place, and the fighter craft engines spooling up for take off or even just maintenance checks can probably be heard for miles out in the jungle. As the spec ops team that took her hostage marches her through the packed hangar and into the work spaces beyond it, she passes more droids, consoles, and people flipping through personal datapads than she can keep accurate count. The tech signature of this place must be truly _enormous._

The Partisans are (or had been, last she checked) several thousand strong and no slouches with their own offensive weaponry, but this is next-level logistics. This is a real army, the hub of which is parked all in one place, without even a planetary dome or a continental blackout.

Honestly, how has the Empire not found them here yet?

It’s almost a little intimidating. In an ironic twist, Jyn finds herself walking a little closer to the hulking Imperial security droid as she is herded through the teeming crowd of rebel freedom-fighters.

The realization makes her irritable, and she shakes her head hard and reminds herself that she is not intimidated, not by a long shot, and if she were, she certainly would never show it. Sure, it’s been over a day since she’s eaten or had any water, her muscles are sore from working the mine, and she honestly isn’t sure how long it’s been since she slept. But whatever these people want from her, it involves weapons and grim black ops soldiers who won’t meet her eye and harsh Imperial manacles still digging into the bloody skin of her wrists. She can’t afford to show even the slightest hint of lightheadedness, or pain, or worst of all, fear.

She flexes her hands as the leader – someone she’s heard referred to as “Sergeant Melshi” – grips her shoulder and surrenders her into the custody of another rebel in a security officer’s uniform (there’s another thing she didn’t see much of with Saw: uniforms). The security officer asks Melshi what happened to his face, and gets a grunt in reply that makes Jyn sort of want to flash all her teeth at him (she won’t, she’s not stupid, but it’s the first time she’s even wanted to smile in a long time so the impulse catches her a little off guard). She flexes her hands again a little hopefully, but the security officer doesn’t take off the manacles either, and the movement only tears at her skin more, until she feels the smallest trickle of blood drip down her palm. She hurries to press her hand flat against her shirt to wipe away the evidence, glancing down to make sure the blood is smeared into an existing stain to hide the color.

Over her head, Kay suddenly says, “Oh good, you have returned in time. I have a status report for you.” The droid stalks away from her side, as does Melshi and his team, leaving Jyn alone with the security officer. She could care less about the spec ops team, but the heavy sound of Kay’s footsteps fading away into the hangar noise leaves her feeling oddly bereft. Which is both a stupid thought, and a dangerous one. She glances up to mark where he’s gone, anyway.

Cassian is staring at her.

He’s a good fifty paces or more away, and for some reason he’s simply standing in the middle of a clearly busy pathway between several piles of equipment. He doesn’t seem to notice all the other rebels pushing around him in both directions, though, he’s perfectly still as he stands with a datapad in one hand and the other reaching out to rest on Kay’s chassis in what looks like a friendly thump frozen in time.

She takes an instinctive step towards him, but then her arms are yanked to the side and the movement surprises her so much that she stumbles. The security officer is scowling at her suspiciously, the stun baton now off his belt and in his hand. She guesses the spec ops’ team’s injuries must have set him on edge. Jyn brushes his tense face off – she’s been hit by so many stun batons in the last six months that one more is hardly a threat – and twists around to see – but he’s gone, even Kay is gone, nothing but the stream of mechanics and pilots and other various rebels pushing their way through the hangar on their own business.

The security guard yanks the chain connected to her manacles again, and another drop of warm blood slips down her wrists. Briefly, Jyn considers snatching that baton from his hand, a hard upswing to the chin and a quick snatch of his blaster, she doesn’t need to get the manacles open right now, that can wait, just turn and bolt right towards that open doorway…

But the plan dies before it’s fully formed in her head, and she presses her lips together and follows the uptight guard through a series of hallways and then down a set of old, worn stone steps to where the hot, humid jungle air turns chilly and a little bit sour. Jyn saw this coming, of course, but her stomach still clenches a little tighter as she recognizes where they are going.

Sure enough, the guard shoves her into a rough-hewn stone room with a set of durasteel bars welded hastily over the ancient doorframe, and locks the bars tight behind her.

She lets herself hope that perhaps there is at least one difference between this prison and the last, but after a quick scan, that flicker of hope snuffs out too. Yes, there’s the innocuous but unavoidable lens of a security camera tucked up into the corner of the cell. There’s no privacy for her here, either. Worse still, there’s not even a bucket in the corner, and she has a feeling there is no decontamination line in this old ruin, either. If she’s down here more than a couple days, this is going to get pretty disgusting. She’s not entirely sure she wouldn’t rather be in Wobani than here.

But she _is_ here, and there’s currently nothing to be done about it, so Jyn trudges the few steps to the back of the cell, where someone has set up a rickety pop-up cot, and gingerly sits down. The thin metal legs don’t instantly collapse under her weight, so she leans back against the wall and closes her eyes. Her stomach growls and her lips crack from the dryness of her mouth, but she keeps her face neutral and her body language relaxed and unconcerned. They are watching, after all.

Is _he_ watching?

Well, if he thinks she’s a liar who dumps him at every chance, then probably not.

If she listens very carefully, and ignores the sounds her own tired, battered body makes, she can hear the high-pitched hum of the camera’s power source. She debates turning to gesture at it, or maybe pretend like she’s sending some secret code (heh, that would probably send a few of their Intel people into a tizzy), or at the least, stare into it unblinking, which she knows from experience can have a very an unsettling effect. Or if she’s above playing games with her new wardens, she might spend a little time poking around the cell and looking for weaknesses. Unlike Wobani, this place wasn’t originally meant as a prison. Those bars might not be as strong as they look. She could find a crack or a bit of crumbling stone or maybe a secret door, which swings open and Saw is on the other side, glaring at her. His heavy armor is flashing, his eyes are dark with the curling smoke of the burning Onderon jungle, his voice echoes with the ion bombs the TIE fighters used to drop on them. _Shall you sit idly by?_ Another bomb whistles down from the slate-grey sky of Wobani and explodes behind him, outlining him in glaring red. _Will you expose your throat to them, a mongrel dog subjugating to a cruel master?_

Jyn’s heart is withered and gone, left behind months ago in a warm bed with a man who smiled when she spoke his name. But Saw’s accusations dig into her pride and the old anger surges up in answer – how dare he call her coward, how _dare_ he call her meek, after he _dumped_ her, after he left her with nothing and no one - so she narrows her eyes and holds up her shackled wrists for him to see and howls _what would you have me do? I have no weapons! I have no army! I have no choices! Nothing! They are always watching and I have nothing!_

Saw looks at the chains, then her snarl, and his teeth gleam white against his dark skin as he smiles at her like he used to just before they charged into battle.

 _When you are short of everything except the enemy_ , he quotes the old lesson, and despite herself, Jyn feels an almost hysterical swell of laughter rising in her chest.

 _Then you are in a combat zone_ , she finishes, twelve years old and Saw Gerrera’s fierce child, his best and truest soldier.

 _So behave as such_ , he points a huge hand at her, admonishing and bracing, and Jyn turns and throws herself down the path he has indicated for her, down and down into the storm, the dust clouds choking and the blaster fire lancing past her like lightening, down and down and

Jyn wakes up with a snap.

It’s dark in the cell, the ambient light from the distant windows now gone and replaced with the significantly fainter florescent bulb in the hallway outside her cell. She blinks a few times to reorient – she’s slumped down on the cot, still more or less upright against the wall, but her neck is stiff from the awkward angle of her head. When she lifts it, though, a wave of dizziness washes over her. Damn, she’s more dehydrated than she thought. A day and a night, she thinks fuzzily, since her last drink of water or taste of food, or at least a day and part of a night. And then she realizes what has woken her –

Someone is standing at the cell door.

Jyn clenches her jaw but keeps her breathing light, her movements slow and careful. The camera probably has some kind of filter against the darkness, but Humans have terrible night vision, and the silhouette in the faint light of the hall is definitely Human. She can’t make out any features with the light behind him, but he probably can’t see much of her face either, not in this dim cell. So she keeps her eyes half-closed to cut down on any reflection and waits to see what he does.

He opens the door, and steps inside.

Jyn’s stomach clenches and her fists curl. There’s no guard outside the cell, not that she can see or hear, and he hasn’t brought any alternate light. Jyn’s first sneering thought is – sneaking in to have a bit of fun with the prisoner, are we? A small, delicate looking female, alone and clearly not valued very much, shackled in the dark in a room with nothing but a bed. Freedom-fighters or not, monsters exist everywhere, Jyn learned that lesson long ago. Well, if he thinks to find an easy mark, he’s got another think-

A light snaps on in the cell. It’s not much brighter than before, but enough that she can see him now. Jyn’s breath catches, her eyes fly open, and all her dark thoughts desert her for a long, silent moment as Cassian stares at her from the other side of the cell, his hand frozen over the small light-switch that she hadn’t noticed earlier.

He flicks his eyes to the side, a brief movement she almost misses, but when she glances in the same direction, she sees the faint shine of the overhead light reflecting on the camera lens.

Instantly, she drops her shoulders and lowers her chin, wiping the shock from her face and looking at him as neutrally as he is looking at her. They are being watched, after all. Cassian’s eyes scan her face, searching and careful, and then he nods slightly. So quietly that she can barely hear it, barely even sees his lips move, he murmurs, “Good.”

Then he leans down and sets a large canteen on the floor, and with a gentle kick, sends it skidding across the rough stone until Jyn catches it with her own booted toe. Warily, she reaches down and picks it up, and almost cries as she feels the weight of the water sloshing inside. A brief spike of fear punctures her relief as she screws open the cap, but if they are going to poison her, she thinks, at least it will be a quicker death than the slow agony of dehydration.

And anyway, she doesn’t think he’s _that_ angry with her. Probably.

He gives her a few minutes to savor the cool rush of water, to feel the pounding dehydration headache ease slightly. Jyn forces herself to take small sips, pausing to breathe in between each taste – it would be a bad idea to make herself sick right now, not with the cameras watching, not while she’s in a combat zone with her hands bound and empty of weapons, and only an uncertain ally nearby.

He’s looking at her wrists when she finally turns her attention away from the half-empty canteen, and Jyn realizes belatedly that she’s bleeding again, the manacles having chafed open the old sores when she drank. It’ll probably scar, she thinks idly, a nice souvenir of her time in Imperial and Alliance custody. Not that it matters, she has worse in other places.

What matters is the way Cassian’s eyes darken at the sight, the way his mouth thins out and the corners turn down. He doesn’t like the blood on her skin and around the cuffs of her sleeves. Good, that means he doesn’t hate her enough to want her hurt. That...isn’t really a happy thought, but it’s better than what she feared. She doesn’t have much else to go on right now, doesn’t know what he’s doing here – or hells, what she’s doing here, for that matter – so Jyn settles the canteen in her lap and leans back against the wall again, waiting.

“Beka Sivral,” he says slowly. He steps slightly to the side, a move that turns her slightly away from the camera as her gaze follows him. Jyn shifts her weight on the cot subtly, turning her shoulder to the lens and tilting her face further away from it. So he doesn’t want the watchers to know that they are connected, and doesn’t want them to see her face as they talk. The spark of hope in her chest flickers back into life. “Kestrel Dawn.” He meets her eyes, and Jyn tilts her chin down in slight acknowledgement. She’ll play along, whatever his game. He registers her acceptance, and steps a little closer. There’s a note that might be approval in his voice now, he’s pleased that she’s playing along, that she’s read him correctly. The spark in her chest flickers a little brighter. “Tess Rou. Tanith Ponta. Brynna Grilt.” He pauses, and for some reason his fingers curl into fists for a brief moment before he folds his arms across his chest and adds, “Liana Hallik.”

Jyn notes how he skips ‘Mira Thorn,’ but there’s no time to wonder at it because he looks her right in the eye and says in a suddenly flat voice, “Jyn Erso.”

The world tilts sideways, the air squeezes out of her lungs, and somewhere in the chaos of her mind she thinks _oh. He does hate me._

“Daughter of Galen Erso,” Cassian continues mercilessly, either heedless of her confusion or indifferent to it. “An Imperial collaborator in weapons development.”

There is no air in her lungs, but her face is carved of stone because she can’t give him this, can’t give him anything, she has nothing and –

( _when you are short of everything but the enemy -)_

Jyn sucks in a deep breath, forcing the air into her lungs, forcing her shoulders to drop again and her jaw to unclench. “What is this?” She demands in a harsh tone, glad now that she’s turned away from the camera, glad that no one but Cassian saw her face pale and her eyes widen when her fath- when that name was said.

“We think you can help us,” Cassian replies quietly, and then he does something strange. He unfolds his arms and holds his hand out, palm up and fingers flat, his face impassive. Jyn stares at him, thrown. He jerks his head towards his hand and in the dim light she almost thinks she can see the traces of a smile around his mouth. “A bargain,” he clarifies.

( _He holds up his hand, palm up in the traditional smuggler's bargaining gesture. “Deal,” he says, his eyes intent on her face._ _Jyn’s mouth curves into a half smile, and she presses her palm against his. “Deal,” she replies firmly._ )

But she can’t press her palm to his, not with the manacles around her wrists, not with the camera lens steady and unblinking, not with _Galen Erso, Imperial collaborator_ ringing in her ears. So she just looks from his hand to his face, and asks, “Who are you?”

“Captain Cassian Andor,” he says, and drops his hand.

“And why…” she has to stop and swallow another gulp of water from the canteen, and she curses herself as her fingers fumble the cap slightly, giving away her nerves. She takes another breath and makes herself ask in as derisive a tone as she can muster. “And why is Captain Cassian Andor bargaining with prisoners?”

“Don’t ask me,” he tells her with a clear note of sarcasm, and his eyes flick in the direction of the camera again, although his head is turned slightly away from it. “I’m just a droid tech.”

 _Liar,_ she thinks, _spy_ , and remembers how thin he’d been, how sharp all his bones had felt digging into the muscles of her arms when she hugged him as a kid. He wants her to remember that moment, that conversation when she’d told him that she wouldn’t die because the odds said she should and he promised that she would grow up. However scornful his tone, there’s a message in this particular lie. If only she could decode it. Blindly, Jyn gropes for the words that will tell him she understands, that will tell him that whatever he thinks of her now, she’s on his side. Or at least, that she wants to be.

“So that was your rust bucket that threw me around on Wobani?” Jyn grips the canteen so tightly that she might bend the metal.

Cassian’s expression sharpens for a moment, and his eyes scan back over her as if he’s looking for something, and Jyn grimaces and shrugs. She’s not hurt, not really. Not from that. Cassian ends up looking at her wrists again, and his expression falls back into neutral at last, though his eyes stay on her hands. “It was not our intention that your rescue be so…violent,” he says after a beat, and for a moment his eyes soften and his voice drops, and she thinks he’s maybe forgotten the game they are playing as he looks at the blood on her skin.

“Rescue?” she snorts, deliberately loudly, lifting her shackled wrists up to get his attention and shaking them. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

The mocking indifference snaps back onto his face, and he shrugs back at her. “You attacked our people,” he says. “We can’t trust you to behave.”

She opens her mouth to snap something harsh in response, then stops herself. Cassian’s face is indifferent, but his eyes are intent on her, and under his arm, she sees his fingers move in a quick gesture. The movement is blocked from the camera by his body and folded arms, and she barely catches it herself. He’s holding his hand flat again, palm up. _Bargain_.

“You want my help,” she says slowly. “Then first take off the chains. Then we’ll talk.” She makes a show of pausing, of pursing her lips and looking him over. “Or _I’ll_ talk, anyway.” She leans her head back against the stone wall behind her and cocks an eyebrow at him. “To someone who actually has the authority to make bargains with me, droid boy.”

The corner of his mouth twitches before he flattens it quickly. “Alright,” he agrees. Then to her surprise, he unfolds his arms and walks across the cell to her, and drops to his knee in front of her. Jyn freezes, struggling to keep her face calm and her body still. “Don’t forget,” he says loudly as he gestures pointedly at the camera. “Even if you overpower me and escape the cell, you are surrounded, and there is nowhere to go.”

“Scared I’ll kill you, Captain?” she responds in the same carrying voice, and hopes that no one can hear the edge of real fear in her words. _Does_ he think that she would…? _I didn’t want to leave you_ , she thinks as she stares at the sharp line of his jaw and the mocking twist of his lips. _But I couldn’t let you die. I was too weak for that_. _I’ve always been too weak._

“I think you’re smarter than that.” Cassian reaches for her wrists, the flash of a small metal key in his fingers. The manacles drop away with a last painful scrape across her skin, and Cassian flings them away too hard to play off as casual. They clatter across the stone, and she sees his eyes narrow as he gets a good look at the mess they’ve made of her wrists. Perversely, the darkness in his face feeds the spark that has been wavering unsteadily inside her – _maybe_ , she thinks. Maybe he doesn’t hate her. Maybe he doesn’t think her so faithless. _Maybe_ -

But the camera is still watching, so Jyn gives a short, cheerless laugh and says, “Not much for chains, are you?”

It snaps him out of whatever dark place he’s gone, and with another indifferent shrug, Cassian pushes himself up and stalks away. “No, not much,” he agrees shortly. “Are you willing to talk now?”

“Depends. What do you want?”

“When was the last time you were in contact with your father?”

A scratchy beard against her cheek, the smell of mud and rain and machine oil, a quiet voice that whispers _I love you, my Stardust_ against her tangled braids.

Her mouth is dry as bone again, and this time she knows no amount of cold water will soothe the ache. “Fifteen years ago,” she forces out.

Cassian’s voice is still distant and cool, but he waits a few moments after she speaks to throw another question at her, and Jyn dares to be grateful for it, dares to believe that he’s doing it on purpose to give her time to recover. “Any idea where he has been all this time?”

Does he really think she knows? That she, what, has been hiding her traitor father from him? Does he think she is some sort of Imperial collaborator herself? No, no, he knows her better than that. He knows her better than anyone alive.

She hopes he does, anyway.

“I like to think he’s dead,” she replies repressively. She glares at the bloody skin of her wrists and grits her teeth. “Makes it easier.”

“Easier than what?” His voice is sharp suddenly, and Jyn glances up to see the indifferent mask faltering slightly. “Easier than acknowledging that he’s a tool in the Imperial war machine? Or that he’s at least chosen a side?”

For the camera, she reminds herself, he’s baiting her because they’re watching. He knows she fought for Saw, he knows how bad things were for her afterwards, _hells_ , he can see the welts on her arms and the starved lines of her body. He doesn’t really think she’s just been gallivanting about the galaxy, pretending everything was fine.

Doesn’t he?

“I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions,” she spits at him, a little more vitriolic than she means to, but unable to hold it back.

“And what about Saw Gerrera?” He asks, and Jyn clutches the water canteen tightly in her hands to keep from flinging it at him, because the camera is watching and he might not mean it. He might even be trying to help her. Or he might be trying to punish her, for lying. For running. For being the daughter of Galen Erso. “Would he still speak with you, if we got you in touch with him?”

 _He might try to shoot me. If I don’t shoot him first_.

“He might not even remember me,” she flicks a finger dismissively, then bites her lip for a moment before she snaps as unpleasantly as she can, “I was just another piece of cannon fodder that he left to die in the field.”

“But you chose to die in Imperial custody instead,” he replies, and she can hear the bitterness in his voice but she can’t interpret it. Anger, that she let herself get taken rather than give the ‘troopers time to call in air support? Frustration that she’s missing whatever message he’s trying to send her? She just…doesn’t know.

This is all wrong, Jyn thinks tiredly. She hadn’t let herself imagine what it might be like, if she ever saw him again, but if she had, it would have been nothing like this. Lies and codes and so much uncertainty between them, the little flutter of hope in her chest so terrifyingly fragile. If she trusts him and she’s wrong, if he really does hate her now that he knows about her father – if maybe he’s always known and always hated her – _fuck_. If he turns on her now, she’s not sure she can survive it. Not when she’s already so wrecked from the past six months. From the past six years, more like.

The canteen is warming up in her hands, the metal slick with her sweat. She tries to force her fingers to loosen, and takes another small sip. “What does any of this have to do with my – with Galen Erso?”

“That depends on what Saw Gerrera can tell us,” he replies evasively. “And on whether or not you are willing to work with us.”

Carefully, Jyn spills a tiny trickle of the remaining water over her wrists, refusing to wince at the burn of cold water on the torn skin. “With the Alliance?” She cocks her head to the side and looks pointedly at the camera. “Or with you?”

He hesitates, glancing down at the floor as if there are answers there – or as if he is hiding his expression from her – before meeting her eye again and answering in a mild voice. “Both, perhaps.” He leans against the wall and crosses his arms, detached and sardonic again. It’s a mask, though, and she doesn’t know about the people watching through the camera, but she can see the edges of it. His body language is relaxed but his hands are clenched too tight under his crossed arms. His words are mocking but there are too many references, too many memories between them that he’s dredging up and throwing at her feet. More memories than he has a right to throw, even, because she never told him anything about Galen Erso, she never dared, and now he was here – they were both here – because something has happened, something is changed, and she doesn’t know what he really wants from her. Not in this cell, not out there in the bustling hangar, not anywhere.

“I can’t,” she starts abruptly, then shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can…” The words fail her, and she glares around the cell for a moment, trying to get her bearings, alone in a combat zone with a spy. Is he really trying to help her? Or is she just desperately imagining it, because no matter how cold his tone now, _I just wanted you to be safe_ echoes in the back of her head like a second heartbeat. Jyn shakes her head, hard, and then looks him dead in the eye and says, “I don’t know what you want.”

The silence stretches out between them. Slowly, Cassian closes his eyes. He pushes himself off the wall, and deliberately turns his back to the camera, stepping between her and the lens. It’s a blatant move, bound to piss off whoever is watching, and all of Jyn’s alarms go off with a vengeance, her body tensed and her heart throbbing in her chest –

Cassian opens his eyes, and Jyn thinks – _oh, shit_.

There is no derision in his expression now, no cold indifference. And there isn’t, though she looks hard for it, any hatred. He looks at her like he’s seeing her from very far away, like a cold man looking at a distant fire, a hungry man peering through the windows at a meal he can’t reach. More than anything else, though, he looks _exhausted_.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he says at last. “Our survival is on the line. Maybe everyone’s survival.”

Without thinking, Jyn replies, “There’s more to life than just surviving.”

She thinks – hopes – it will make him angry, maybe enough to shake off whatever weight has settled over his shoulders (or rather, that he is at last allowing her to see), but all Cassian does is shake his head and smile slightly at her. “What fool told you that?” Before she can respond, he turns on his heel and walks back to the cell door. “I think she will speak to you now, ma’am,” he says in that carrying tone that is meant for the camera, and then he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the fandom doesn't really talk much about what prison might have been like for Jyn, and how the "rescue" mission probably didn't look much like a rescue from her point of view. 
> 
> I don’t know if the [Keshiri](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Keshiri) actually cared about nonconsensual nudity, but they were apparently quite religious, so it would have fit. I mostly just wanted to show how constant surveillance and never having a private moment can do weird things to your head, and depending on your mindset, really _bad_ things, too.
> 
> Jyn’s cellmate with the squid face was [Oolin Musters](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Oolin_Musters), who was apparently a member of the Rebel Alliance herself, but Jyn never learned her name, species, or history, and they apparently spent most of their limited conversational energy threatening to kill each other. Interestingly, the wiki tells us that Musters escaped during Jyn’s extraction and made her way to Jedha…and was standing on the other side of that Imperial tank when the Partisans blew it up. Musters died when the Death Star destroyed Jedha. Makes you wonder if she and Jyn might actually have turned into grudging colleagues or even friends, had both survived the events of Rogue One and reunited on Yavin or something. (Man, when Gareth Edwards decides to kill off all his characters, he kills them ALL off, doesn’t he?)
> 
> Also, for the record, Cassian only discovered that "Jyn Erso" was _his_ Jyn when he sees her in the hangar, because in this universe he was not as directly involved in finding Galen Erso's daughter as the movie implied, but he was much more involved in hunting down Death Star supply lines and vanishing slaves and so on. I'll explain it in the next chapter, I promise.


	10. the voice of your eyes (part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took a little while to get out. I'm not sorry that it got a little emotionally overwrought in some places. Thanks for all the kind comments and lovely meta-discussions some of you have had with me about these characters and this universe! Feel free to swing by on [tumblr](https://skitzofreak.tumblr.com/) and chat with me any time.

She gets about twenty minutes of sitting in her cell (her Rebel cell, but Jyn finds that aside from the lack of stormtroopers by the door and the distinct mildew smell, it isn’t much different from her Imperial cell), before the door opens again.  She straightens, but otherwise keeps her face as stony as possible and her body still. Whoever these people are, whatever they want from her, she will give them nothing. Not yet. Not until they prove that they aren’t just the Empire in shabbier clothes. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s blind follower again, and she’ll _never_ be anyone’s slave. Not for anyone or anything.

Not even for Cassian.

The Human who walks in first reminds her of him, actually, in a distant, uncomfortable way. He doesn’t physically resemble Cassian at all – he’s built like a prize boxer gone slightly to seed, all bulky shoulders and thinning red hair and unfriendly scowls – but there’s something that makes her think of her fr– well, of the man she’s come to know over the years. (If she still knows him, that is. Right now, she’s not entirely sure.)  It’s the eyes, Jyn decides, the careful way that Scowler deliberately makes his eyes look flat and a bit stupid while simultaneously taking in every detail of his surroundings. The only difference between this man’s watchful gaze and Cassian’s is the anger. Cassian masks his attention with indifference, letting his eyes glaze over and his face fall slack, making himself look like some random Joe Nobody lost in his own thoughts. Scowler, on the other hand, masks his attention with irritation, making himself look unpleasant, someone to be avoided. Well, Jyn snorts internally, flexing her wrists and feeling the raw skin pull over her sharp bones, he might actually _be_ unpleasant. But either way, it makes for an excellent shield. She already wants to avoid him as much as possible.

Oblivious to her wishes, Scowler plants himself just to the right of the door and folds his arms, a datapad dangling carelessly from one hand, his glare etched deep and his body language threatening. Obviously, he means to play the bad warden in this game, an assumption that is confirmed a moment later, when the good warden comes floating in his wake.

She’s tall, fair, dressed head to toe in gleaming white robes that flutter around her like wings, and her austere face is set in gentle contemplation. With her soft hands and delicate stance, she appears about as harmless as it is possible for an adult Human to be – and yet, draped across the middle of her chest are the silver chains of the Imperial Senate.

Jyn’s fingers curl on her lap.

Good Warden comes to a stop directly in front of Jyn, her hands folded together in front of her, her eyes serious and thoughtful. The third Human, a blonde female in gear that was clearly passed down second- (or third- or fourth-) hand from someone slightly larger than her, shuffles into the cell behind Good Warden and stands ramrod straight by the door. She’s clearly meant to be some kind of guard, but she’s just as clearly never been trained as one. Her blaster holster is still snapped closed, her visual scan is all over the place (in fact, she seems to actively not want to look at Jyn, presumably the only threat in the room), and…Jyn glances down at Rookie’s legs, and yes, it looks like she’s locked her knees in order to stand up straight as possible. If Jyn can draw this conversation out past the ten minute mark, Rookie will probably pass out. If Jyn is quick and willing to risk it, she can probably use the distraction to knock out Scowler and blow right past Good Warden, and then she can – well, at the least she might – there’s probably lots of old corridors in this ruin, she could always – but then _Cassian_ might -

 _Hm_.

In the absence of a good plan, Jyn sits quietly and waits.

After a long moment, Good Warden speaks. “We have,” she says in a cultured, well-modulated voice that Jyn could easily imagine ringing out through some grand Senatorial chamber, “an opportunity to help each other.”

The Rebellion, help _her?_ Well, that’s a new one.   _You don’t have anything I want_ , Jyn thinks but does not say. _I can’t possibly have anything you need_.

“Two days ago,” Good Warden continues, “we received news that an Imperial cargo pilot defected from his unit and somehow found his way to Saw Gerrera. He claims,” she pauses, glances behind her at Scowler, and Jyn sees for the first time the faintest crack in her composure. “He claims to have information on an Imperial project, a super weapon that can destroy entire planets.”

It sounds fanciful and a little hysterical, something out of a science fiction holodrama or one of those endless and complex superhero series that are so popular in the Inner and Mid Rim systems. Even if it is true, it isn’t exactly surprising that the Empire would try something like that. But what the hells does it have to do with Jyn?

Good Warden looks down at her folded hands, then directly at Jyn, and suddenly her face does not look nearly as gentle or harmless. “The pilot claims that he was sent by your father.”

The silence fills the cell like a choking fog. Jyn’s heart begins to race again, but her mind goes curiously quiet, nothing in her ears but the distant sound of wind and rain and heavy black boots marching through the muddy fields as she runs and runs and runs for the secret place, alone because Papa didn’t come and Mama went back.

“We’re up against the clock, girl,” Scowler snaps into the void around her. “So if there’s nothing to talk about, we’ll put you back where we found you.”

An empty threat, and they all know it. The Alliance will never risk sending a team back to an Imperial prison world. Saw certainly wouldn’t, and he is much more willing to risk his people for the sake of the objective than any Alliance puke ever was. If Scowler decides she’s not worth keeping around and too dangerous to just let go, he or one of his minions will take her somewhere deep in the jungles of Yavin IV and put a blaster bolt through the back of her head.

“I was a child,” she forces out. “Saw raised me, but I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t even know where he is.”

“We know where he _is_ , what we need is - ” Scowler starts, then cuts himself off abruptly. Jyn’s not sure if he stops because he thinks he’s revealing too much (yes, he definitely reminds her of Cassian, an older, angrier, less kind version of the man that she – well, of Cassian), but it seems more likely that Scowler stops because Good Warden shifts her weight and raises her chin to speak.

“This is a chance for a fresh start,” she tells Jyn. Behind her, Rookie wobbles slightly, turning faintly pale. Jyn tenses, waiting, but then Rookie slowly bends her knees, stretching her legs a bit, and her stance steadies. _Damn. So much for that option_. “If you help us now,” Good Warden says, oblivious to Jyn's inner calculations, “we will make sure that you go free.”

It occurs to Jyn, several seconds later, that she ought to be excited about that. Instead, she finds herself trying to picture what, exactly, freedom would mean. Most likely, a ride to some relatively neutral backwater planet and some scandocs with a new identity. If she’s lucky, Good Warden might drop a credit chip in her palm (or have someone else do it, so that the Wobani filth ingrained in Jyn’s skin won’t stain those lovely white robes). If she’s really lucky, she might catch a glimpse of Cassian before she’s packed into some shuttle and sent on her way.

All of this is assuming, of course, that Saw doesn’t shoot her on sight, or that whichever of Scowler’s minions they assign as her babysitter isn’t ordered to slit her throat the moment her usefulness ends. After all, she does know the location of their secret headquarters.

It’s a shite offer, and everyone in this room knows it, but it’s still better than rotting in Wobani.

And if it’s all true, if there _is_ a pilot and Saw _does_ know something about her f– about Galen Erso…

Slowly, feeling the heavy hand of the past pressing down on the back of her neck, Jyn nods.

Good Warden smiles.

A few minutes later, she and Scowler have left, and Jyn is alone with Rookie, who it turns out is actually named Corporal Rodma Maddel, and she’s not meant to be Jyn’s guard so much as her guide. “Showers are this way,” are the first words she says, and Jyn can appreciate at least that the other woman is trying very hard to keep her nose from wrinkling. “They’re sonic, so they can clean your clothes, too.”

Jyn shrugs and follows without comment. She doesn’t speak as Maddel leads her through the same winding, haphazard corridors of modern prefab materials tacked onto ancient crumbling stone, but it turns out that Maddel is one of those people who feels compelled to fill silence. “The Galley is down this way,” she points down a hall towards the distant clatter of cheap dishes and multi-species voices all vying to be heard over one another. Jyn adds it to her mental map. “We’ll swing through there next. It’s hydrogenated smapp today, but there’s pudding too, so it’s not all bad. We’ve got some decent cooks,” Maddel continues even as she leads the way into a large public shower and grabs a handful of new hygiene products out of a small cupboard in the wall. Jyn glances around the space and some small part of her notes with secret gratitude that the shower heads are all partitioned off from one another, and the openings hung with opaque curtains.

And there are no cameras.

“Here,” Maddel turns and dumps a handful of travel-sized toiletries into Jyn’s hands. Tooth-cleaner, foldable hairbrush, some kind of tweezer/nail clipper tool, and a bar of scent-neutralizer, the kind that made it difficult for olfactory-oriented hunters to track a soldier. The products are all awkwardly small and made of cheap materials, but the clippers are sharp, the tooth-cleaner and the hairbrush both could easily be made into a shank, and the neutralizer could be shaved down and slipped into someone’s food as an effective poison. It’s the deadliest array of weaponry she’s had in her hands for months.

“I’ll wait,” Maddel points to the small bench set in the wall. “Oh, and here,” she fishes in her belt for a moment, and then pulls out two wrinkled strips of white - thin bacta patches, the kind found in cheap personal first aid kits – and tosses them on top of Jyn’s other treasures. “For your, um, your wrists. And after this,” Maddel continues in a rush, as if to gloss over her generosity, “we’ll get some chow and then I’m to take you to your handler. The operative you’ll be working with, I mean.”

Jyn steps into the shower where there are no cameras and no other people, closes the curtain, and tries very, very hard not to cry.

It is the first time she has been alone, with no one watching her face or her body language, no one watching for the _weakness_ , in half a damn year. It shouldn’t hit her the way it does, but she sets all her little toiletries on the small shelf in the wall and leans her head against the cool metal partition for a long moment anyway. Outside, Maddel keeps up her random commentary, talking mostly to herself it seems, something about becoming an operative herself soon, using her skills for the rebellion (she has a degree in something to do with urban development), and how she hopes she will get to train with the operative that recruited her. Jyn gets a sharp grip on herself and turns on the sonic, stripping carefully out of her filthy clothes and holding each layer up to the shower head to clean them too.

“I probably won’t get the captain, though,” Maddel says a bit mournfully outside the curtain. “I didn’t know when he recruited me, but he’s apparently really high ranking. Draven’s right hand man, or something. Or at least, Draven’s favorite agent.” She laughs, and Jyn turns her face up to the sonic, breathing deeply and forcing herself not to flinch, because she’s entirely naked now and there is an armed stranger only a meter or so away. But then, she’s been surrounded by armed strangers lately. This one can’t see Jyn’s naked body, at least, and she definitely can’t see Jyn fitting the toiletries into her clothes carefully, making sure that they are well hidden in her pockets in case someone tries to lift them from her later. “Actually, it’s a bit weird that absolutely nobody seems to know Andor’s official title,” Maddel says meditatively, “I mean, apparently he’s been here for _ages_.”

Andor, Jyn thinks absently, quickly and efficiently pulling her now clean clothes onto her now clean body and trying not to revel too much in how damn good it feels not to stink like a cesspool. She’s heard that name before. Maybe she’s run across him out in the criminal –

_And why is Captain Cassian Andor bargaining with prisoners?_

“Hey, you alright?” Maddel’s voice is suddenly much closer, and laced with both concern and suspicion. Jyn blinks, and scrambles to grab her boot from the floor and shove it onto her foot.

“Yeah,” she calls a bit hoarsely. “Dropped my boot.” She pushes open the curtain before Maddel can barge in, and lets her babysitter see her properly. She’s clean, dressed, relatively neat looking, with bacta patches on her wrists and no weapons in sight. Maddel gives her a long look, then shrugs.

“Okay, well, let’s get some chow, then.”

Before Maddel can veer off into a new subject, Jyn decides to probe a little. Cautiously. “So this Captain doesn’t train rook- doesn’t train new agents, then?”

“Don’t know,” Maddel shoulders open a poorly-hung door that turns out to be another entrance into the semi-crowded galley. Jyn eyes the open space for a long moment, but her memory of it is clouded, so she can’t tell if anything’s really changed since the last time she was here. Anything other than the person standing next to her, that is. And instead of leading her around the back of the galley counter, Maddel simply shuffles Jyn into the line and chatters for a few minutes about the different kinds of food – this one good for humanoids, that one made specifically for developing adolescents, another with special digestive enzymes already added for species that need them. Jyn grabs as much of the food labelled “for humanoids” as she dares, but all the while her mind circles around _Captain Cassian Andor_ , wondering if there’s anything more the corporal might know, wondering if she can bring it back up without rousing suspicion, wondering what would happen if she slipped away from her “guide” and maybe poked through a few offices…would he appear behind her and ask what she was looking for?

Jyn rolls her eyes. Where in the galaxy did _that_ romantic nonsense come from? If she goes poking around Alliance spaces now, someone will just shoot her in the head, and that will be that. It won’t even be Cassian with the blaster _(will it?),_ just whichever random rebel happens to walk by _._ The lack of food is clearly screwing with her brain.

“Oh, Lieutenant Bey!” Maddel grins and leads Jyn towards a tall woman in a rebel flight suit with a cascade of dark curling hair. “You’re back! How was your flight?”

“Long, hot, and cramped,” Lieutenant Bey replies easily, gesturing with her fork for them both to sit and throwing back a long drink of some pinkish liquid with her other hand. “The climate control in my cockpit was busted again, so I roasted the whole way home.” Her right eyebrow is almost neatly bisected by a large scar, which stretches slightly as she quirks it at Maddel. “And Rodma, I told you to call me Shara.”

“Yes ma’am, you sure did,” Maddel agrees cheerfully.

Shara Bey sighs, then gives Jyn an appraising look. “You’re a new face. New to the Alliance or just new to Yavin?”

Jyn considers her, but before she can decide how best to answer, Maddel pipes up. “This is Jyn Erso,” she says, oblivious to the ice that flash-freezes down Jyn’s spine at hearing her name – her _true name_ – spoken so casually in the middle of a packed room. But Bey doesn’t so much as twitch, Maddel gives it no special weight, and no one else in the room even turns around. The name “Erso,” all her life a ticking bomb strapped to her heart, is apparently unknown to the general population of the rebellion’s foot-soldiers. It feels so…anticlimactic somehow. The tension in Jyn’s belly doesn’t ease, but she is able to breathe again, and she makes herself pick up her fork.

“Hello,” she says neutrally, shoving food into her mouth as fast as she can to avoid any further need to speak.

And promptly chokes on it when Maddel adds, “She’s going to work with Captain Andor.”

_I’m going to what?_

“Uh huh,” Bey raises an eyebrow at Jyn and shoves her drink across the table. Jyn should have refused, but she just saw the other Human drinking it, and the blue mashed whatever-it-is has stuck thoroughly in her throat. Jyn swipes the glass and takes a long gulp. “I hadn’t heard that Cassian had a new partner.”

 _More like his prisoner_ , Jyn thinks a little bitterly, for surely she can’t be anything else, not with Scowler’s threat hanging over her head, not with the words “your father is an Imperial collaborator” ringing in her ears. But then, there had been the way he looked at her, in the cell with his back to the camera and nothing between them but silence and the heavy exhaustion of their lives…Jyn clears her throat and offers the pink drink back. “It’s temporary.”

Shara waves off the drink and props her chin on her fist against the aluminum galley table. “Mm. Have you worked with him before?”

 _He dragged me through an Imperial droid factory while I bled from the head. I carried him out of an Imperial raid while he bled from the gut. I ran away from him, he ran away with me._ _I know all his favorite shows and foods, he knows every one of my best slicing techniques. He laughed at my jokes. He’s ticklish, and I think I might be the only person alive who knows that. We hugged as kids and slept together as adults and honestly I’m not entirely sure which of those meant more to me._ “A little.”

“Well, he’s a good man in a tough situation,” Bey says slowly, watching her with a curious expression that Jyn can’t quite interpret. She pauses almost thoughtfully, and Jyn senses the implicit invitation, even though she doesn’t understand why Bey is offering it.

“Is he?” she murmurs cautiously, and shovels more food in her mouth.

“Smart. Thorough. Dedicated.” Bey wrinkles her forehead with concern. “ _Too_ dedicated, sometimes,” she says mostly to herself, her eyes suddenly far away. Jyn thinks maybe she knows what the other woman means – how many times in their years of writing back and forth had he mentioned that he’d forgotten to eat, or been too busy to sleep?

“Weems says he’s one of the best in the Intel community,” Maddel chimes in, snapping both Jyn and Shara Bey out of their private thoughts. “I’m joining Intel as an urban recon agent,” she confides, “so I asked around, and no one knows much about what he does exactly, but everyone knows he’s the longest-lasting agent Cracken’s ever had. Maybe even been around as long as Draven himself.”

“He’s been here a long time,” Bey agrees.

“And operatives like him have rotten odds,” Maddel continues with awe in her voice. “Most of them die in the field, but Weems says Andor’s never _once_  even been captured.”

Jyn can feel the pilot’s assessing eyes on her, and realizes abruptly that she’s grinding her teeth together.  She unlocks her jaw and tries to sound casual and unaffected. “So he didn’t die just because the odds said he should. Good for him.” Maddel turns to stare at her, her loaded fork frozen in the air, her eyes wide. Shit, that must not have been as casual as Jyn was going for. In retrospect, her tone had perhaps been a little sharp. But what was with these people and constantly harping on about how he was going to die? At least when Saw talked about dying for the cause, he framed it as a general comment. _People_ die for the cause. _Someone_ must sacrifice for the cause. No one ever looked at Jyn and told her there was a one in four chance she would bite a blaster bolt every time she rolled out of bed. It was understood, of course, but no one _said_ it. She would have broken their damn faces if they had.

“That’s funny,” Bey drawls, breaking the awkward silence. “He said something like that to me once. A couple years ago. Almost word for word, actually.”

 _Better to stay silent and be thought a fool,_ Saw growls in her memory, _than to open your mouth and remove all doubt._

“You know, he’s had a few hard months, lately,” Bey draws an aimless pattern in her blue mash. Abruptly, she looks up and smiles, her teeth gleaming against her dark skin and a wicked glint in her eye. “So, Jyn – when exactly did you say you worked with Cassian, before?”

“I didn’t say,” Jyn replies blandly, pushing herself up with her empty tray. “What time were you supposed to pass me off to Captain Andor?”

“Oh, uh, well it was a little vague,” Maddel blinks up at her. “He just said as soon as you were ready.”

“I’m ready.” Jyn nods curtly to Bey, who raises her now-empty glass in salute and winks. Jyn strides away to dump her tray in the bins as Maddel scrambles out of her seat and rushes to follow.

“He’s down in the droid spaces, I think,” the corporal leads the way out of the galley and down a level, veering through the erratically designed hallways and rooms until they come to what looks like a battered side door. “One of these workshops. I’m not sure which.”

Jyn debates pretending that she doesn’t know either, but in the end, her impatience wins out. She opens the door and walks through the droid bays, headed for the workbench tucked into the corner in the back. The space is just as clustered and crazy as it had been over a decade ago, except now there are a few more workspaces built onto it, new rooms budding off of the main hub and stuffed with parts and pieces. A few astromechs roll by, passing under a row of what looks like protocol droid limbs swinging from the ceiling. Jyn walks until she sees the shelves made from TIE fighter wings, looking a little worn from the years but still dusted and organized by some meticulous and impenetrable system. Jyn turns past the droid recharge ports, one of which is occupied by a lanky black KX droid, his Imperial insignia scuffed but clearly visible.

“Kind of creepy, isn’t he?” Maddel says softly, following Jyn’s line of sight. “Captain Andor reprogrammed him, so he’s safe enough, but damn.” She whistles. “Where I come from, seeing one of those was the prelude to all your worst nightmares coming true.”

Jyn glances at her, then steps forward and raps sharply on the black chassis, turning her head to hide her smile as the corporal jumps back, startled. Above her head, two yellow optic lights flicker to life and focus on her face. “Jyn Erso.”

“K2SO.”

“I assume you have some urgent purpose for disrupting my low-power runtime.”

“I have a question.”

“There is a non-zero chance that I will be willing to answer it.”

“Did Captain Andor,” her tongue trips a little awkwardly over the strangeness of his real name, “program your voicebox, or is it Imperial standard?”

“Imperials do not provide security droids with full functioning voiceboxes,” Kay informs her. “Factory models have pre-recorded stock phrases designed for specific scenarios.”

“So which of you chose to make your voice so prissy?” Jyn asks glibly, smirking up at him. “Or is it just the giant rod rammed up your arse that makes you sound like that?”

Behind her, Maddel gasps. Kay's optics whir quietly as he telescopes his vision on her face, then in a haughty tone he says, “Your understanding of mechanical engineering is as flawed as your grasp of basic anatomy.” A moment later, his optics darken and the faint whine of his servos dwindle into the gentle hum of the recharge stations. Jyn chuckles softly, though she wipes her face back to neutral as soon as she turns around to look at the stunned Maddel.

“Cranky rust bucket, isn’t he?”

Maddel opens her mouth to answer, but movement to the side drags Jyn’s attention away. Something is shifting just out of sight, around the corner of the recharge stations. Jyn’s pretty sure she knows what ( _who_ ) it is. She steps around the chargers.

It’s exactly the way she remembers it, a little island of stark cleanliness in this sea of mechanical madness. His workbench is wiped clean, neatly labelled boxes and little drawers stacked along the wall, and his tools hung with care and precision in their racks. Even the old light fixture overhead is the same.

The person standing in front of it is…somewhat of a different story.

Or perhaps not – the spark that she hasn’t felt since the last time they met months ago, that she hadn’t felt at all for years before that, flickers suddenly back to life inside her.

Maddel snaps off a salute to his back and says smartly, “Jyn Erso, sir, delivered to your custody as ordered.”

Cassian sets down whatever small device he had been fussing with and turns to them, his face as neutral as Jyn hopes her own to be. “Thank you, Corporal. You are relieved of this duty.”

“Sir,” Maddel drops her salute smartly and flashes Jyn a small grin before walking briskly back out of the droid bay, her steps noticeably faster as she passes the recharging station where Kay is plugged. Her footsteps fade into the background noise of the various machines.

“So you’re a droid tech, then,” Jyn says eventually, searching for something, anything to say to him.

Cassian’s face doesn’t change, but he takes a deep breath and turns back to the bench. “We depart in an hour,” he tells the workbench, picking the small device back up. His voice is devoid of any emotion, as cool and indifferent as if they are actually strangers and not – well, not people who have met before. Not _them_. “Saw Gerrera is on Jedha, somewhere in the vicinity of the Holy City. It will just be us and Kay.” He says the last part hesitantly, like he expects she will have some issue with it.

“Good,” she says flatly, folding her arms and waiting for the other boot to drop.

“It’s the winter season on Jedha,” he carries on after a beat. “So I requisitioned some cold weather gear for you. It will be on the ship when we go.”

Jyn studies his back, noting the tense lines all along his shoulders and spine, and how his hands are turning the device over and over but not actually doing anything to it. “Thanks.”

“I have a contact in the city, a woman whose brother - ”

“They were calling in TIE support,” Jyn interrupts, because he still hasn’t looked at her, because the distance in his voice is suddenly unbearable, because, because this is _Cassian_ , and she has been so fucking careful not to even think about him for months. “Some Bantha Bitch dragged me out of the shuttle and then the bucket heads were calling for TIE fighters to shoot you down. So I lied on the comm about being in the cargo hold. And I’m _not_ sorry for it,” she bites out, struggling to keep her voice under control and hating the waver that creeps in anyway. “I didn’t skip out on you on purpose, not like – not like Scipio. But if I hadn’t told you to go, we all would have been shot down or caught. So I’m not sorry I did it. And if you’re still pissed about it,” she shakes her head, trying to sort the jumble of emotions and words that tangle on her tongue. “I’m still not sorry,” she finishes, a little lamely but honest all the same.

“I’m not angry with you.” Cassian is still speaking to his workbench, though he sounds less detached and more uncertain now.

“But you are angry,” Jyn hugs herself tightly, wanting to stride forward and grab his shoulder, force him to turn around and at least _face_ her, for fuck’s sake.

Cassian’s head bows, and he leans forward and braces his palms on his desk. “You were dead.” He says it so softly that for a moment she thinks she’s misheard. “Not at first,” he goes on before she can organize some kind of coherent response. “When I first went back to the cargo hold and you weren’t there, I did think…I wondered if you had…changed your mind. I considered going back,” he pauses, then gives a low laugh so bitter that it makes Jyn’s throat close tight and the spark in her chest flinch and dim. “No, I _wanted_ to go back, but I could not. Not with all I had, not with my damn mission at stake, and not if you had chosen to leave me again.”

 _I didn’t_ , Jyn wants to shout at him, but the words catch in her closed-off throat and all she can do is watch as he reaches up and scrapes a hand through his hair. It’s longer than it was last time, and his beard more ragged – all traces of the neatly groomed Imperial officer gone now, and good riddance.

His voice is ragged too, when he starts again, his back still to her. “And then Kay found the report, with footage of your – of you being shot. When I sliced into the Imperial archive, I found _Mira Thorn’s_ death record.” Finally, he spins around to face her, and the neutral mask is gone. The interrogator in the stone cell is gone, the spy, the rebel, all discarded. Jyn looks at him and sees only Cassian looking back.

Her breath catches.

“That’s why I didn’t come,” he says, dropping his eyes to the floor and hunching his shoulders, looking for all the galaxy like he’s confessing to something shameful.

“…come?”

“To get you," Cassian sighs, gripping the edge of his workbench as he leans back against it.

“To get me,” she repeats blankly. And then the words hit her like a sledgehammer, and she almost staggers as she stares at him in astonishment. “From _Wobani._ ”

“Yes,” he continues as if he hasn’t said anything incredible, as if he hasn’t just flipped the whole world on it’s head. “I know it doesn’t mean anything now, and you have no reason to believe me, but I would have come for you if I had known you were alive, Jyn.” He sighs, shakes his head. “When Analysis said we needed to find ‘Jyn Erso,’ I didn’t even get a holoimage, so I never made the connection. I had no idea that the woman they had found in Wobani was…” he makes a sharp, almost impatient gesture at her, “so I didn’t even ask to be part of the official rescue op.”

 _It might actually have felt like a rescue if you had_ passes fleetingly through her head, but most of Jyn’s attention is locked on the sheer insanity of what he is saying. “Does your command know that you met me all those times? That we stayed in contact all those years?” she demands, stepping close and dropping her voice. “They don’t. That’s why you were playing to the camera. They have no idea that we’re – that we aren’t strangers.”

His eyes flick up to hers, then drop again. “No. I never registered you as an asset.”

“So you couldn’t have gone to Wobani anyway,” she says reasonably, pretending like the words _I would have come for you_ aren’t igniting in her chest and branding themselves across her heart. “You tell your boss that you need to run off to a prison planet to get some asset you’ve never mentioned before, and they will look at you like, like a,” she stumbles, too irritated and tired and keyed-up from his proximity to find the words. “Like you're a nutter,” she finished at last, clenching her fists.

He glances at her through his eyelashes, and she thinks there might be a hint of humor lurking in it his expression. “It would have been…suspicious.”

Jyn moves a little closer, not quite in his space but too close to be ignored, too close for him to keep pretending that it's only coincidence that he's looking at the floor and not her. When he does look up at last, the movement brings his face a little closer than she is expecting, a little closer than she’s ready for, but she fights against the instinct to step back because she needs him to understand. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, either,” she tells him firmly.

“I know,” he agrees, and he shrugs, his mouth twisting into a bitter sort of half-smile. “And yet.”

Jyn stares at him, and he leans back against his workbench and lets her.

Finally, with the most careful enunciation and clarity that she has ever applied to any language, she snarls the only words she can think to say. _“The worms of revenge to eat your charred nostrils.”_

Cassian laughs. It’s a small, abortive sound, because he catches it in his throat before it can fully form, but it’s a laugh, and they both know it. “Your Huttese is still terrible,” he murmurs absently, his hands flexing on the edge of the workbench behind him as he watches her face. _If he just leaned a little further down,_ Jyn thinks a touch hazily, _if I just stepped a little forward…_ She’s not the only one thinking it, either – she sees his eyes flick down to her mouth, sees the tension in his shoulders shifting from the hunched brace of someone expecting a blow to the breathless uncertainty of someone anticipating a touch.

That seems like too much, though, to run her hand up and over his shoulder, too much to ask for, too much to presume. Instead, slowly, half ready to turn and bolt out of the room if he gives her even the slightest indication that he doesn’t want her to do this, Jyn reaches out and rests her fingertips lightly on the back of his hand. She can't quite force herself to look at his face as she does it. Instead, she looks at her fingers brushing his skin, her pulse racing and her nerves sparking like wires. Maybe she has gone mad, maybe she is setting herself up for pain and abandonment further down the road, but Jyn Erso knows down in her bones that if she doesn’t at least try to reach out now, then the bright spark in her chest will go out for good. And if he doesn’t reach back, then she will bury it away and get on with…with facing whatever they are about to face. But if he _does_ -

Without hesitation, Cassian flips his hand and twines his fingers with hers.

 _Oh_.

The spark in her chest is a roaring flame in her blood now, burning through all her veins, rushing through her head until she can barely hear the whirring of the machines around them, the distant cacophony of the rebellion just outside the door.

“I am not - ” Cassian pauses, looks down at their joined hands, then back up at her. “You said once that, ah, that you were not going to die just because the math said you should.”

She nods. “You did, too.” She shrugs at his startled expression, wildly aware of how the movement tugs slightly at her hand in his, and reflexively clutching tighter in case he thought she was letting go. Instantly, she’s embarrassed at her own clingy foolishness, but Cassian runs his thumb over her knuckles in response, and she decides maybe it doesn’t matter so much. “Lieutenant Shara Bey,” she explains, and he relaxes minutely.

“I did tell her,” he nods, his eye shifting back to their hands and then up again quickly, as if he’s afraid to be caught looking. “I mean, I said that to her, once, but not that you said it first. I, ah - ” He stops, shaking his head and sighing. The workshop light overhead is extraordinarily bright, because she can practically count his eyelashes and every small line around his eyes when he closes them.  “What I’m trying to say, Jyn,” he begins again in a less scattered voice, “is that I meant it. I am not going to give up and die, regardless of the odds. And I should have known better than to think you ever would.”

The stubble on his face is much softer than it looks, and Jyn lets her mouth linger against his cheek for a long moment before the burning in her lungs reminds her that she needs to breathe.

When she pulls back, Cassian is now the one staring like all the words in the world have vanished from his mind, and his hand is so tight around hers that it is almost painful.

This is the point where the cheesy holovids and the few cheap novels she’s read always fade to black. Or, in the action vids that she prefers anyway, something ideally should blow up somewhere nearby. But there are no convenient explosions, no sudden urgent messengers bursting in from the hall, and (thankfully, she supposes) the world does not fade away to the credits. But she can’t just stand here with her face flaming and her heart pounding in her chest, and Cassian barely seems to be breathing, let alone inclined to use any of that vaunted spy skill. Shouldn’t he be good at smoothing over awkward situations? Well, if he is, he’s falling down on the job, so Jyn swallows hard and tries to find something to say. “That’s a Brilleto Mark III scope, isn’t it?”

Cassian blinks, then follows her gesture to the surface of his workbench, where the little device he was toying with when she arrived is lying forgotten. “Yes,” he says in a rough voice. He clears his throat and turns as if to pick it up with his free hand, which would require him to reach over their joined hands and that’s just ridiculous, so she loosens her grip and pulls away. It feels weird, and a little unbalancing, but from the look on his face he is just as conflicted as Jyn, which comforts her a little. Cassian grabs the scope and holds it out to her. “Picked it up years ago.”

“It still works?” Even the strangeness of this whole conversation (the strangeness of her bare, unshackled wrists, the strangeness of _I would have come for you_ , the strangeness of her father’s name spoken aloud) doesn’t keep her from feeling a little bit astonished as she looks at the old scope. Brilleto has been out of business for over fifteen years, and they hadn’t made blaster scopes for years before that. The Mark III was one of their best products, sure, but they are almost impossible to find and even harder to maintain.

“I’ve been modifying it, over the years,” he flips it in his hand and holds it end-out to her, so she can take it without her fingers brushing his if she wants. Jyn does so carefully, because it’s ridiculous that she wants to grab his hand again after she’s only just let go. “Keeping it up to date with the latest software, that sort of thing.”

“Lot of work for a scope,” she murmurs as she examines it. She has to admit, though, it’s a damn good piece, sturdy materials, reinforced barrel latch, and two – no, three – tiny slots for datachips, so cleverly crafted into the sides of the scope that a casual observer would never dream of finding them.

“It’s been something of a project. It…reminded me of you.”

Jyn jerks her head up. “What?”

“When we first met,” Cassian says carefully, scrutinizing her face as he speaks. “I had just…acquired it. And I didn’t really need it, but it had these little… ah, yes, there,” he nods as Jyn points to the datachip slots. “And when we were talking, I was thinking, this is a slicer’s scope. The sort of thing a scout might need.” He runs his tongue over his lips. “That’s why I brought you here. I, ah, I meant to give it to you.”

 _But then we got into some weird fight and I grabbed you and you hugged me,_ Jyn looks back down at the scope. _And nothing was ever the same again_.

“A slicer’s scope,” she says at last.

“If you want.” Cassian shrugs again, and then scrubs a hand over his face. “We should get to the hangar. Kay’s recharge timer is about to go off, and we need to make sure the U-Wing is prepped.”

“Yeah,” Jyn straightens and clips the scope firmly to her belt. It slots neatly around the material and hangs comfortably against her hip like it was carved to her shape. Jyn grins a little at it. Now all she needs is a blaster.

“Jyn,” Cassian says her name softly, and when she looks up, he’s looking at her the way he did in her cell, the way he looked at her in her safehouse, in the theater on Haidoral Prime and the restaurant on Scipio - the way he’s looked at her a dozen times over the years that the galaxy has spun them together and then apart again. She’s never really had a name to call it, and never really dared to try, but she guesses (she hopes) it might be something like love.

Cassian holds out his hand. “Ready?” His voice hitches slightly, but his hand doesn’t shake and his eyes are steady on hers. He’s offering her more than a hand to hold, and they both know it – he’s offering her a chance to find her father, a chance to face Saw, a chance to fight the people who have hounded and hurt her, a chance to live without looking over her shoulder at every sound. Most importantly of all, he’s offering her a chance to do all of that, and more, with someone she can trust at her side.

Jyn reaches out, and takes it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _here is the deepest secret nobody knows_   
>  _(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_   
>  _and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows_   
>  _higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_   
>  _and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_   
>  _i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- e e cummings
> 
> "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
> 
> [Briletto](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Briletto) was an arms manufacturer in Star Wars that mostly worked for/sold to the Confederacy of Independent Systems (the Separatists).


End file.
